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PRESENTED BY
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ADDRESSES
World's Social Progress
Congress
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
April One to Eleven
Nineteen Hundred and Fifteen
Auspices Committee of One Hundred
Edited by
WILLIAM M. BELL. D.D.. LL. D.
Bishop Pacific District Church of the United Brethren in Christ
President World's Social Progress Council
COMMITTEE OF ONE HUNDRED
BISHOP EDWIN H. HUGHES. D.D.. LL. D.
Chairman, San Francisco
REV. H. H. BELL, D.D.
Exposition Secretary. San Francisco
Printed for the World's Social Progress Council
by
THE OTTERBEIN PRESS
Dayton, Ohio
1915
Copyright, 1915,
by
WILLIAM M. BELL
THE WORLD'S SOCIAL PROGRESS CONGRESS.
Authorized and promoted by the Committee of One
Hundred in charge of reHgious work at the Panama-
Pacific International Exposition, the committee being con-
stituted by the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ
in America, and directly in charge of a special committee,
as follows :
Bishop William M. Bell, D.D., LL.D., Chairman.
Governor Hiram M. Johnson.
Hon. Richmond P. Hobson.
Hon. J. Stitt Wilson.
President Benjamin Ide Wheeler.
Rev. Hugh W. Gilchrist, D.D.
Rev. J. A. Geisinger, D.D.
Rev. J. E. Squires, D.D.
President John Henry Whyte.
Professor C. S. Gardner, D.D.
Chancellor David Starr Jordan.
Bishop Francis J. McConnell, D.D., LL.D.
Professor E. A. Wicher, D.D.
The sessions were all held in Hall B, Civic Auditorium,
San Francisco, California, April 1-11, 1915.
Professor P. P. Bilhorn, of Chicago, conducted the
music, supported by a large chorus.
At a business session, the congress unanimously adopted
the following:
DECLARATION.
1. That in our judgment the time is opportune for a
permanent organization that shall undertake to develop
and carry forward a specific and constructive program in
behalf of Social Progress, which shall be, please God, as
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
largely as our resources and ability shall make possible, a
world-wide, co-operative effort.
2. That we proceed to organize the World's Social
Progress Council by electing officers to lead us in carry-
ing forward this work and that we authorize the said
officers as an Executive Committee to complete the organ-
ization as in their judgment shall be deemed wise and best.
3. That we authorize a session of the World's Social
Progress Council at such time and place in 1916 as the
officers or Executive Committee may deem advisable, and
also the prosecution of the work of the council as exten-
sively as shall be found possible, in the United States,
Canada, Mexico, and any other country in which the good
work in any way may be promoted.
4. That we will duly exalt the principle of individual
character and responsibility as the basis for social prog-
ress.
5. That we recognize the inevitable reactions of en-
vironment on the nature and achievements of human
kind, and call attention to the responsibility of society for
the securing as nearly as may be of a favoring environ-
ment in so far as it is a matter of human control and
such as shall be adapted to the highest efficiency and
development of the race.
6. That we are of judgment that the religious organ-
izations together with all the other institutions and or-
ganizations of civilization should at once identify them-
selves under a sane and aggressive leadership in behalf of
social justice and efficiency in order that every removable
human handicap shall be lifted from the back of our
common humanity.
7. That a satisfactory definition of, and program for,
social progress shall be wrought out in the light of the
highest and worthiest ideals known to mankind.
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
8. That civil government should genuinely serve the
cause of social progress by heartily acknowledging the
sovereignty of the people and nurturing that sovereignty
in constructive activity, international justice, friendliness,
and good will.
9. That we will work loyally for permanent peace
among men and nations, not merely for absence of strife,
but for co-operative and constructive relations based on
mutual help and mutual respect.
At a business session on April 9, the Committee on
Nominations reported, placing in nomination the follow-
ing officers, and the same were duly and unanimously
elected :
President, Bishop William M. Bell, Los Angeles, Cal.
Secretary, Prof. E. A. Wicher, San Anselmo, Cal.
Treasurer, A. W. Naylor, First National Bank, Berk-
eley, Cal.
SUMMARY.
1. The congress has been a marvelous manifestation
of the rising tide of interest in behalf of social solution
and advancement in that speakers from different parts of
the world have willingly and even enthusiastically trav-
eled long distances to speak on the platform with no re-
ward expected except the reward that comes from heart
satisfaction because one has done by so much the more
his duty in promoting a new and commanding social con-
science that shall assert itself in behalf of better condi-
tions in modern civilization.
2. The grade of work done from the platform has
been exceptionally high. No speaker was invited unless
well accredited in the light of real and notable achieve-
ment with the result that the entire list of addresses has
brought no mere average production to public hearing
and attention. Human tongues have flamed into the most
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
sublime and persuasive eloquence as pleas have been
made in a sane and orderly way for the removal of the
predatory, atrocious, and unjust aspects of our present
social order. Just and discriminating appreciation of
every good in modern civilization has constantly been in
evidence while the outreach toward progress and im-
provement has been keen and insistent.
3. The utterances of the platform have been emo-
tional and scientific. The emotion of hate has been dep-
recated and that of brotherhood exalted. Demand has
been made that nations as well as individuals shall ex-
emplify moral genuineness and that governments shall be
held as responsible as individuals for good will, sincerity,
and disinterestedness in order that the evolution of the
social order shall be unmistakably constructive. The pro-
grams suggested for human betterment have been sane,
inspiring, and assuring. Nothing weird or fanciful has
been in evidence, but the healthful, moral, stable, and con-
firmed methods of social advancement have been brought
forward. The note of optimism and courage has been
dominant throughout. Admitting the difficulties of the
task at hand, and allowing for the tenacity of the agencies
of evil, there has nevertheless been manifest in every ses-
sion a sense of social potency that is most heartening.
4. Existing institutions and organizations have been
duly honored while a mighty tide rose daily toward new
creations and alignments in so far as the current social
awakening shall make necessary and desirable. A re-
sourceful and regnant spontaneity answering to the
world-wide call for unselfish and sacrificial life was en-
gendered with cumulative power. The new adjustments
called for in relating the total wealth to the total and
universal human necessity were discussed fairly, fear-
lessly, and sympathetically. With all that is transpiring
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
in the world that is depressing, the skies were never as
radiant with hope as to-day. The race is facing forward
and not backward. The spiritual, social, moral, and eco-
nomic entities are rising in collossal proportions and the
Almighty Jehovah is lifting up into a holy persistence
and importunity the hearts of those who must lead the
hosts of brotherhood, good will, and service to mankind.
5. Unmistakably the organization of the World's So-
cial Progress Council presages a far-reaching mobilization
of the forces that contend for the humanizing of industry,
economics, and civil government. A continuity of edu-
cational effort is planned together with such concrete ap-
plications of the ideals of the council as just adjustments
shall dictate and human resources and skill shall make
possible. The extension of the work of the council on
lines indicated in the San Francisco program is in mind.
Just as rapidly as means are available for the work of
extension, local councils will be chartered and developed
throughout the United States and in the regions beyond.
From expressions of interest and appreciation from men
and women who are influential and able to give assist-
ance, this support seems reasonably assured. Correspond-
ence and remittances may be addressed to Bishop William
M. Bell, President, 227 West Fifty-first Street, Los An-
geles, Cal. ; Prof. E. A. Wicher, Secretary, San Anselmo,
Cal. ; A. W. Naylor, Treasurer, First National Bank,
Berkeley, Cal.
INTRODUCTION.
This volume of addresses delivered at the World's
Social Progress Congress, assembled in San Francisco,
California, April 1-11, 1915, is for most part the work of
a stenographer and due allowance must be made for such
mistakes as the fact would indicate. It should be said,
however, that the work was done by one skilled and effi-
cient, and it is the belief of the undersigned that very few
mistakes have been made. Not all the addresses are in-
cluded because of the fact that the services of the stenog-
rapher did not cover the entire eleven days. It is believed
that the contents of the volume will justify its publica-
tion as being a part of the product of the Committee of
One Hundred, though as a matter of course, each speaker
is himself responsible for his utterances. The addresses
are on subjects of current interest and urgency. That
they will be given a wide and profitable reading is well
assured. Many friends who heard one or more of the
addresses have expressed a desire to forward a good cause
by circulating the books. The book will retail for one
dollar per copy, and remittances and orders may be sent
to Bishop WilHam M. Bell, President, 227 West Fifty-
first Street, Los Angeles, California.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter I. The Social Urgency. Bishop William M. Bell,
D.D., LL.D., Bishop Pacific District, Church
of the United Brethren in Christ 13
Chapter II. The Minimum Social Program of a Militant
Christianity. Hon. J. Stitt Wilson, Kx-Mayor
of Berkeley, California 22
Chapter III. Woman and Social Progress. Prof. E. A.
Wicher, D.D., Presbyterian Theological Semi-
nary, San Anselmo, California 35
Chapter IV. Education and Social Progress. Dr. Thomas
Walter Butcher, President Kansas State Nor-
mal School, Emporia, Kansas 43
Chapter V. Commercialized Vice and Social Progress. Dr.
Kate Waller Barrett, President Florence Crit-
tenden Missions 56
Chapter VI. Social Incorporation and Social Progress. John
Henry Whyte, President and General Manager
of the Writers' Plantation Company, Ingle-
side, Phoenix, Arizona, and Press Club, St.
Louis, Missouri 64
Chapter VII. The Family and Social Progress. Bishop Wil-
liam Ford Nichols, Bishop of the Protestant
Episcopal Church, San Francisco, California.. 92
Chapter VIII. The Movement for Peace and Social Progress.
Dr. David Starr Jordan, Chancellor Stanford
University 102
Chapter IX. The Pacific Coast and the Peace Movement. Rob-
ert Cromwell Root, Secretary American Peace
Society for California 126
Chapter X. War and Social Progress. Prof. Charles Atwood
Kofoid, Stanford University 136
Chapter XI. "Kultur" as Against Civilization. Prof. Edward
Benjamine Krehbiel, Stanford University 150
Chapter XII. The Fallacies of War. Dr. William Trufant Fos-
ter, President Reed College, Portland, Oregon 159
Chapter XIII. More War Fallacies. Chancellor David Starr
Jordan 168
Chapter XIV. Peace and Social Progress. Mrs. May Wright
Sewall, Representing International Council of
Women, and National Woman's Suffrage Asso-
ciation 17Y
Chapter XV, Public Utilities and Social Progress. Hon. Fran-
cis J. Heney, Attorney and Government Prose-
cutor under President Roosevelt 194
Chapter XVI. Our Cities and Social Progress. Dr. Dana W,
Bartlett, Social Welfare Worker and Commis-
sioner _ on Various California City and State
Commissions 218
Chapter XVII. Conflict and Social Progress. Rev. Guy V. Tal-
bot, Secretary Sacramento, California, Church
Federation and Field Secretary State Federa-
tion 222
11
Chapter
XVIII.
Chapter
XIX,
Chapter
XX.
Chapter
XXI.
Chapter
XXII.
Chapter
XXIII.
Chapter
XXIV.
Chapter
XXV.
Chapter
XXVI.
Chapter
XXVII.
Chapter
XXVIII
Chapter
XXIX.
Chapter
XXX.
Chapter
XXXI.
Chapter
XXXII.
Our Public School Properties and Social Prog-
ress. Dr. Dana W. Bartlett 231
Process and Climax in Social Progress. Rev.
D. M. Gandier, Superintendent California Anti-
Saloon League 248
The Movement Against the Saloon and Social
Progress. Rev. Matt. S. Hughes, D.D., Pas-
tor First M. E. Church, Pasadena, California 256
The Woman's Cliristian Temperance Union and
Social Progress. Mrs. Bridelle C. H. Wash-
burn, Representing the California W. C. T. U. 270
Side Lights on the Movement Against the Saloon.
Dr. Guy Wadsworth, Superintendent California
Dry Federation 280
The Triumph of the "Dry" and Social Progress.
Hon. A. J. Wallace, Ex. -Lieut. Gov. of Cali-
fornia 284
Fair Legislation and the Liquor Traffic. Rev.
D. M. Gandier 292
The Testimony of Science as to Alcohol and So-
cial Progress. Dr. David Starr Jordan 297
Votes for Women and Social Progress. Mrs.
Gerberling, Congressional Union of Washing-
ton, D. C 306
Taxation and Social Progress. Hon. A. J. Wal-
lace 309
The Key to Social Progress. Prof. Charles S.
Gardner, Southern Baptist Seminary, Louis-
ville, Kentucky 323
Democracy and Social Progress. Dr. John R.
Haynes, Physician and Social Welfare Worker,
Los Angeles 336
The Revival of Our National Religion and Social
Progress. Rev. J. S. McGaw, D.D., Field
Secretary National Reform Association 351
The Principles of Social Progress. Prof. Charles
S. Gardner 361
The Church and the Challenge for Social Ad-
vancement. Bishop Francis J. McConnell, D.D.,
LL-D., Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal
Church, Denver, Colorado 391
12
Chapter I.
THE SOCIAL URGENCY.
BY WILLIAM M. BELL.
The temper of the universal mind is such at the present
time that economic conditions are passing under a new
and searching scrutiny. This is not to be wondered at,
but on the contrary it appears to be easily accounted for
by reference to any one of a number of causes. In a
single word the constructive conscience of mankind,
growing every day more powerful, accounts for this new
scrutiny. The general prevalence of knowledge and reli-
gion and the by-products of each are making the process
of scrutiny vital and humane. This age appreciates and
understands the social and life significance of money as
no other age has been able to do, and this is no reflection
on preceding generations. The appreciation is the result
of the general advance in the conquests of civilization and
the resultant feeling that man's achievements in the ma-
terial environment should be compelled to minister with a
greater uniformity and equality to human comfort, happi-
ness, and advancement. That the demand for social jus-
tice should not appear to have a pronounced urgency to
all individuals equally is inevitable. Self-complacency and
comfort are always apprehensive of change. Social and
economic inequalities are felt most keenly by those who
are the greatest sufferers therefrom. The feeling and
viewpoint of the sufferer and the already affluent are
sure to differ. The correct appraisement of the view-
point and feeling of each must be made and the voice of
each must be heard dispassionately and sympathetically.
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
It should be borne in mind that the evolution toward
social justice and equality, while admittedly desirable,
has always been seriously retarded. The retarding influ-
ences are sometimes deliberately pernicious and preda-
tory. It is this aspect of the situation which justifies the
interest and activity of all fair-minded people. Desirable
evolutions are measurably retarded by certain limitations
that human ability cannot annul. When the influences
that retard are of deliberate, human origin, it becomes
the duty of government and of individuals to accept the
challenge which the fact affords, and apply the remedy.
This task always is urgent and at the same time admit-
tedly difficult. Its difficulty must not deter us from the
task. If the evolution becomes so manifestly tardy as to
indicate apathy and inertia, then orderly assault on the
existing status becomes imperative duty. Desirable re-
form may not be forever delayed. Radicalism sometimes
is necessary in the forwarding of needed reforms. Rad-
icalism and conservatism both have their place in the
evolution of society. They both have their place in the
individual character. The processes of social decay or
of social progress are of necessity slow, and the fact often
results in stress and storm. It is both a menace and a
safeguard. Apparently the over-conservative would in
effect annul the law of change but it cannot be an-
nulled. It exists by divine appointment and it must be
frequently invoked, but it must always be done with sanity
and moderation. It requires deliberate, efficient, and or-
ganized work to correct the ultra-conservative. The pres-
ent status has a certain alluring and subtle fascination,
while it is also extremely persistent. It is always easier
to be satisfied with conditions as they now obtain than it
is to pioneer in the direction of improvement, and espe-
cially so when the vested interests enter into the issue.
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The Social Urgency
The defense of the present status always has the advan-
tage. The present status is frequently accorded an ab-
normal sanctity and a wisdom which it does not possess.
Beside, social progress has always been and always will
remain a costly process in every sense of the term. Be-
cause inequality, after it has existed for a time, assumes
a peculiar tenacity, and because social progress is a chal-
lenging and costly process many surrender to social pessi-
mism. Hopeless people can never do the vital work of
society. Social impotence is but another form of social
hopelessness.
No intelligent person but recognizes the present exist-
ence of destructive, abnormal, and unnecessary financial
inequalities that can be remedied. Our civilization is
seriously approaching the problem of the distribution of
wealth. Its accumulation has had its difficulties and is
no mean achievement. It has involved the devotion of
brain and brawn, and always will do so. Its undue and
abnormal centralization has elements of peril to the indi-
vidual and to the social order. The situation must be
discussed calmly and dispassionately and those who dis-
cuss it and find protest against it in conformity with their
best judgment and ideals are not, therefore, to be branded
as erratic extremists. Conservatism is often astute, but it
is sometimes obtuse and lacking in alertness. Every in-
stitution and organization has what may be called a peril
of conservation. Organizations and institutions may press
the matter of self-conservation to the extent of self-
destruction. "Whom the gods would destroy they first
make mad." On all the big, mooted questions that are
being born of the very rapidity with which society is
evolving, there is need of patience, candor, open-minded-
ness, sympathy, and thoroughness. It is evident that
social and industrial justice would all but remove poverty
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
throughout the civiHzed world. The contribution which
this justice would make to the progress of society has
not as yet been fully appreciated. Between the status as
it is and as it should be, is a world of achievement that
affords task and challenge for us all. Modern civilization
is slowly moving toward a fine social potency. Undue
conservatism will challenge every progressive movement.
Admittedly the tasks of democracy are colossal and call
for unselfishness, exalted character, and statesmanship.
A civiHzation that proposes to work out its problems
through the principle of democracy must maintain a high
percentage of efiiciency in religion, education, govern-
ment, commerce, and industry. An abnormal conserva-
tism registers itself by refusing to face all of these high
challenges. It consents to the floating derelicts of the
social order and treats them as a matter in due and reg-
ular course. They are accepted as well nigh a standard
commodity from which there is no escape. Instead of
challenging our principle of democracy, we need to chal-
lenge our inertia. Instead of doubting that a new gait
in social advancement is possible and that it is now due,
let us hear the clarion call to ''forward march." Those
who stand for social justice and advance must show
themselves resourceful and alert. Stupid goodness is at
this time especially unpardonable and offensive. Brilliant
sinning must be met by briUiant righteousness.
Specific offenses against the progress of society must
be noted not as though they were normal, but on the con-
trary erratic and abnormal. One calling attention to them
must not be rated as reveling in the abnormal or as under-
valuing or overlooking the wholesome and worthy in the
social order. With all this in mind let us note that cer-
tain representatives of big business have been presuming
to dictate political policies as if so to do was an unques-
16
The Social Urgency
tioned prerogative. It should be borne in mind that civili-
zation has always yielded an abnormal control to wealth
as such. The twentieth century demand that government
shall take the viewpoint of the social welfare is sane
and constructive. Any control when becoming con-
scious of its power is tempted to self-interest. Finan-
cial inequality logically creates social inequality. Be-
cause of all this the rising tide of well-grounded pro-
test from an increasingly noble and emancipated humanity
should be duly and carefully appraised. Such a distri-
bution of wealth as approximates equity, is a sane and
Christian demand. Beside, it needs to be well understood
that our captains of finance have no right to debase our
men in public hfe. Such debasing breeds suspicion of
representative government, and such suspicion can only
be deplored. Our cities should be the instruments of so-
cial uplift, but they have been far too often exploited for
the benefit of favored capitalists. Remove the fact and
we will be happy to never refer to it again, but so long
as the fact remains, duty compels that it be pointed out.
Our wage earners need better protection than they are
now having, and in many obvious ways it should be af-
forded without longer delay. Modern civilization must
assume colossal burdens and programs for all sorts of
public improvements, and these should be equitably dis-
tributed. The tax sheets should be investigated without
fear or favor. Let us move from theoretical to actual
equality before the law. Let our courts be extremely
careful to guard against judicial bias in favor of wealth.
Public opinion, that mighty aid to efficiency in a free
government, must be protected from subterfuge and du-
plicity. A press that dehberately misleads the public de-
serves to be characterized as venal and unworthy of its
high privilege under a free and generous government.
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
The people are the greatest jury on earth, and they must
not be misled. They deserve all the facts and may be
trusted to bring in a useful verdict. On some of the out-
standing evils of modern civiHzation the facts are all in
and the verdict should be forthcoming. Our education
has been and must be of both mind and conscience. Any-
where the lack of moral integrity is a raging cancer. Our
commercialism must not be allowed to give the lie to our
conventional professions of human brotherhood. That
which is conventional onty with us must become spon-
taneous and hearty. We must have genuineness in our
democracy, Christianity, and social interest. The sense
of proprietorship in wealth must give place to a deep
sense of trusteeship. All the processes of our civilization
must be made to accept the compulsions of the moral con-
trol. A genuine effort to install social justice must be-
come the dominant attitude with us all. The sense of
social solidarity is growing rapidly. Our varied and total
control should embody the highest known code of moral
principles. Civilization must face in all lands this chal-
lenging ideal. It cannot be side-stepped and dismissed as
impractical and visionary. Nothing immoral and inhu-
mane has a right to any sort of legal sanction. Legisla-
tion has no authorization save as it moves in the sanctions
of morality. High ideals rather than money must dom-
inate the world. The viewpoint of the hardened, capital-
istic mind must not be allowed to dominate our free insti-
tutions. Our safety lies in the Christian mastery of our
economics. Any immorality is transmuted directly into
economic loss. No private enterprise has the right to
diminish or imperil the general welfare. The elevation
of all the people is the supreme task of civilization. We
must stand by good laws even when they interfere with
our im justifiable gains or pleasures. Such tests make
18
The Social Urgency
imperative demand for high religious character in our
citizenship. Let us hail the age of social urgency, for it
is the age of opportunity.
The hour for social reconstruction is at hand. It can-
not be unduly delayed without causing crisis and revolu-
tion of one kind and another. Revolution has been neces-
sary in the past because of blind selfishness and conserva-
tism. It may be necessary again, but if the men who
have the positions of power and advantage in the present
industrial, financial, and general economic status have
apprehended the significance of the rapid evolution of
the social conscience of the race in recent years, it may be
obviated. The great fundamentals of an efficient civili-
zation are rapidly becoming internationalized. There is a
mighty imperative in the movement, and palsied will
be the arm that presumes to turn it back. The principle
of democracy, it is now understood, is not to be applied
to civil government only, but to all that is essentially
good for humankind. It applies to money and property
and the democratizing of these is demanded now as never
in all the past. Money and property are vitally related
to the proper development of all the institutions that are
fundamental to an advancing civilization. The oldest
institution known to civilization is the family. Immedi-
ately when the question of family efficiency is taken up,
there comes the demand for adequate wage for labor,
self-support, ownership, and general economic compe-
tence. A large proportion of the people in the present
generation are wage workers, and all of these people
should be clearly identified with family life. Family life
is impossible to many of our young men to-day because
wages are too low to justify marriage, with its natural
result in parenthood. A low wage is a real deterrent of
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
marriage, for no thoughtful man is so reckless as to wish
to involve himself in marital responsibility which at once
affects the comfort, happiness, and welfare of another
than himself. The wage question ought not be settled on
the low plane of demand and supply. The principle of
social and family efficiency should determine, and this
viewpoint will be adopted sooner or later and become
dominant. It should come spontaneously, but if it does
not so come, then legislation must enforce it. The family
or home life of modern civilization is approaching a
real and necessary standardization. In that standardiza-
tion is the demand for industry, skill, training, thrift, and
high character as the family content. Another phase of
the standardization demands sufficient income in exchange
for honest toil to provide for self-support and ownership
at least sufficient to guarantee reasonable leisure, compe-
tence in old age, and other requisites of family efficiency.
If the family is not self-supporting, society is invariably
called upon to meet the deficit in the form of charity,
asylums of various kinds, court and crime costs, and
special institutions for the defectives. Why not betake
ourselves to a Christian and scientific effort for preven-
tion instead of spasmodic attempts at cure. Ownership
for various reasons is becoming increasingly difficult. It
ought not be too difficult, for that means destruction to
many. The land is almost, if not quite, beyond the reach
of multitudes of families, and this contributes to the so-
cial urgency. Heaven pity the children of the tenements.
We are making the costly blunder of trying to rear chil-
dren successfully and satisfactorily in so-called cheap
rental or tenement districts. Every child is entitled to
contact with meadows, fruits, flowers, forests, streams,
grain fields, and all that makes up God's great out-of-
20
The Social Urgency
doors. There is tragedy in the fact that millions die be-
cause these are denied them. Our flocks and herds must
have green pastures, but the children may die in the
crowded street.
From everywhere and all around comes the cry for the
better here and now world. God would have it so, for
he sent his beloved Son to exemplify and fully accredit
the principles by which the kingdom of human welfare
can be secured. We are all taught to pray, ''Thy kingdom
come, thy will be done, as in heaven so on the earth." Let
us hasten it in our dav.
21
Chapter II.
THE MINIMUM SOCIAL PROGRAM OF A
MILITANT CHRISTIANITY.
BY J. STITT WILSON.
Since the three addresses to be deHvered this afternoon
are almost in the nature of a symposium, it will be un-
necessary to offer any lengthy general introduction. 1
may be permitted to enter directly into the consideration
of the main theme.
WHAT IS THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY?
Leaving aside consideration of doctrines and dogmas,
of rites, forms and ceremonies of the sects or schools of
Christianity, let us ask what, on its human side, is the
supreme religious emotion? What is the hall-mark of
the essential Christian spirit? What is the feeling and
disposition of the heart without which all else professedly
Christian is nothing? What purpose toward our fellow-
creatures is it that is essentially Christian? What is the
very soul and pulse of this red stream that pours out from
Calvary to all mankind ? What supreme urge in the com-
plex passions and activities of our race bears the unmis-
takable marks of the divine?
From Scripture, from history, from, science, and from
human character one simple, direct anszver is forthcoming.
The soul of Christianity is love to humanity. The essence
of the Christ-spirit is compassionate concern for the de-
velopment and welfare, the freedom and perfection of hu-
man Hves. At its maximum this spirit is abandoned, self-
less love that "seeketh not her own," that goes forth to
seek and to save the lost, and to set at liberty them that
22
Social Program for a Militant Christianity
are bruised. At its minimum this spirit is a humanitarian
impulse that seeks for justice and freedom and the rights
of man incarnated in social institutions.
Remove the husks, the forms, the artificialities, the inci-
dental historical accretions from this mind of Christ, and
get down to the substance and reality, and we have at the
least a kindly interest in the well-being of our common
humanity, and at the highest a passionate devotion that
lays down life even unto death for fellow-men. God is
love. ''A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love
one another as I have loved you."^ "By this shall all men
know that ye are my disciples, that ye love one another."
Let us acknowledge that this love to humanity reaches
out to the passionate longing for the eternal and uttermost
salvation of human souls. Then the measure of the value
of the soul is the standard of the value of a human life.
The higher the value you give to the soul in terms of
eternity, and at the gate of heaven, the more unspeakably
sacred becomes that human life in time, on the earth, in
the battle for bread. God is no respecter of persons or
places. The scales of Deity are one for Sunday and Mon-
day, at the altar rail, and in the steel mill or sweatshop.
The church of Christ cannot dare to make human souls
so infinitely valuable on Sunday in the church and at the
altar, that it beggars the wealth of heaven to redeem them,
and then make them so cheap and worthless on Monday,
on the highways and at the factory gates, as to leave them
the pawns of an unjust social system in its mad profit-
hunger.
Let us take this love of human souls that constraineth
us out into the open, out and away from everything that
is ecclesiastical or ritualistic and formal, out and away
from stained glass, and Gothic architecture, and pipe or-
gans— out of the letter that killeth into the spirit that
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
giveth life — let us behold these infinitely valuable souls
out there as dock laborers, and railway workers, and fac-
tory hands, and members of the building and textile
trades, as wandering out-of-works, hunting like wild an-
imals for some morsel of existence.
Can we stand it to come out into the fields and by-ways
where the feet of the Master and the feet of these, his
brethren, tread the actual ways of life? When we have
come out of our close, religious atmosphere and behold
men, women, and children in the actual struggle which
existence imposes, what does our love mean?
Just as we have translated our Greek New Testament
into plain English words, can we translate this tender love
for these infinitely sacred lives into a plain, matter-of-fact,
week-day, social program for using land, and running
machinery, and utilizing labor, and lending credit? Have
we any Monday translation for our Sunday spirit and
gospel? Have we any factory-and-mill version for our
prayer-meeting passion for souls? Have we any social
and industrial organization that will constitute a material
expression, an incarnation of the Sermon on the Mount,
the Golden Rule, and the divine love for man that radiates
from Calvary?
We pray, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven"
on Sunday. Can we form a social system that looks as if
we meant that for all the week days? On Sunday we
pray, "Give us this day our daily bread." Can we use
land, labor, and machinery in such a manner from Mon-
day to Saturday so as not to defeat the very Almighty in
answering that prayer? We say, "Lord, Lord," in our
places of worship. Can we "do the things which he said,"
in our places of business ?
Is there a social program, a proposed scientific organ-
ization of our economic life, to be inaugurated by the votes
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Social Program for a Militant Christianity
and laws of the people, by the processes of democracy,
which is the program of the Christ-spirit, executing the
good will toward sacred human lives?
LOVE AND LABOR.
Keeping hot on the trail of a love that concerns itself
with precious, human lives, our social program must at
the very least guarantee equality of opportunity to all to
use the resources and equipment of civilization, for mak-
ing a living, and conversely every form of private monop-
oly or private administration for private profit which ex-
ploits human life or crowds human beings out of oppor-
tunity— must be abolished.
If the lives of these our brethren are as precious as the
light from Calvary reveals them to be, then we must abso-
lutely make it our first twentieth-century business to es-
tablish economic justice in the use of the land and ma-
chinery by which they get their bread. This is not a sec-
ondary or subordinate consideration ; it is primary and
fundamental.
The man or preacher who says he loves the souls of
men, and does not love their lives sufficiently to give his
voice, his influence, and his vote to establish economic
justice, is faithless to the kingdom of God, and the toiling
masses have long since been suspicious of that form of
infidelity.
There can be no love that excludes social and economic
justice. Economic justice in the equipment for getting
our bread is the lowest common denominator into which
we can all measure whatever Christianity we have. Any
imaginary Christianity that cannot be expressed on its
human side in terms of social and economic justice, is
vain or is some delusion of superstition. It is not the
truth or love of the Carpenter of Galilee, who came de-
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
liverlng slaves, preaching good news to the poor, and set-
ting at Hberty them that are bruised.
Organized Christianity must seek to so revolutionize
our commercial and economic life as to guarantee to each
and to all of the people the material and physical condi-'
tions in which we can live free and happy and emanci-
pated human lives on all planes — physical, mental, moral,
and spiritual.
The present system of industry — known in economics
as capitalism — is the very negation of the whole Christ-
spirit and program. In basis, in process, and outcome it
is a denial of the spirit and teaching of Christ. Capitalism
in its universal gamble with the equipment and products
of civilization, for mere private profit, and its correspond-
ing exploitation, and actual enslavement of human beings,
IS a modern anti-Christ. Destructive criticism of our
present system has about done its work. I need only sum
up in a few phrases the indictment as a background for
the constructive program.
CAPITALISM ANALYZED AND IMPEACHED.
Under capitalism the five great factors in bread-getting
are exploited for private profit; that is to say, land, ma-
chinery, products, labor, and money (or credit).
1. Land, the mother of us all, the source of all wealth,
the recipient of all labor, is gambled with, speculated with,
and monopolized and kept out of use for the sake of the
rise of values and the unearned increment, until human
beings have nowhere to lay their heads, no place to build
a home, no place to expend their labor.
Our present system of private monopoly, private specu-
lation, and private control of land and land values, is
nothing short of a legahzed crime. It is immoral, un-
scriptural, unchristian, inhuman, anti-social, and anarch-
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Social Program for a Militant Christianity
ical — the mother of a whole spawn of social miseries and
tragedies.
2. Machinery, the gift of human genius, the awful
titan that produces wealth as if by miracle, is now priv-
ately owned and run for private profit by the lords of
industry. The very men that make and run this ma-
chinery are reduced to bondage, dependence, and slavery
as this master product, industrial machinery, passes from
the hand that creates to the hand that owns. Modem
mechanical equipment makes men slaves. It is intended,
under truth and justice, to make men free.
3. Labor applied to this magic machinery in trans-
forming natural resources, produces a super-abundance,
an almost limitless flood of products for human satisfac-
tion. But this volume of things and products is seized
upon by our commercial masters and traded with for
profit, and profit only. Coal, iron, gas, electric power,
water power, grain, cotton, lumber, tools, clothing, food-
stuffs— everything is open to the profit-carnival, and to
the monopolist, so that it actually turns out that the more
we can produce in the shortest time, the sooner multi-
tudes of people are thrown idle on the labor market, un-
able to buy the very things their own hands have created
in such abundance.
4. This private property without limit in the land, the
machinery, and the products of labor, and the universal
gamble in these, inevitably exploits, robs, defrauds, and
enslaves the people — the vast, common multitude — the
working classes.
The inevitable outcome is that labor — the muscle, skill,
brain, and energy of men, women, and children — is gam-
bled with. There is little concern as to whether the hu-
man being shall be guaranteed a chance to make his bread
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
and be secure in the full product of his labor. That is
the last consideration.
And thus these human lives, these human souls, whom
we profess to love, in the name of Christ, are sacrificed
to the grossest, crudest materialism on the altar of profit
to the untold enrichment of the priviliged classes.
5. When we add to the indictment the fact that the
power of credit, one of the most tremendous forces in
the human society, is also left in private hands to be used
at will for private profit — is it any wonder that in a civili-
zation where nature and invention and skill is at a max-
imum of marvelous power to yield wealth and abundance,
the poverty of the people should become the curse of our
generation, while "wealth sits a monster gorged midst
hungry populations."
This system is an evil and corrupt tree, and cannot
bring forth good fruit. No reform, no philanthropy, no
charity, no individualistic, personal religion that ignores
social justice can reach this hurt of the people. The axe
must be laid to the root of the tree.
As rapidly as intelligence and good will can act, this
system must be overthrown and a social system based
upon social justice, economic freedom, and simple human
brotherhood must now take its place. This social revolu-
tion, now impending, will be the supreme world-drama of
the twentieth century.
This social revolution is the fulfillment of that prophecy
that nations shall be born in a day. This social revolution
is the coming of the full corn in the ear. It is a grand
tip of the beam of time to the "far-off divine event toward
which the whole creation moves."
THE MINIMUM PROGRAM.
Against this background of social injustice of the pres-
ent system, we present the outlines of the minimum pro-
28
Social Program for a Militant Christianity
gram. By presenting the program briefly and simply, it
will not be lost in a multiplicity of detail, and will remain
more vividly in the mind. We shall follow the order of
our criticism of capitaHsm.
1. Land. The minimum demand of social justice on
the land question is the taxation of the full, unearned in-
crement of land values, in order to break up land mo-
nopoly and land speculation.
Wherever people aggregate, there are social or com-
mon values created in the site on which they aggregate
that would never arise except for the association of men
in communities. This increase in site values is not due
to the skill, capital, labor, or foresight of any individual.
These values are an outgrowth of man's life as a social or
communal being. His physical labors, his intellectual
achievements, and his moral co-operations as a social be-
ing in the vicinity of any site on the earth, create social
values at that site, and at a radius therefrom, that should
accrue to no individual. Such site values or social values
are socially created.
Since the association of men in communities creates
social needs, which government must supply, and since
the same association of men creates values that no indi-
vidual creates, therefore, these land values thus created
are the legitimate, scientific, and just source of all reve-
nues to meet all civic and social needs.
Such taxation of the unearned increment of land values
would secure the average man in a home or farm or
ranch. It would force into use all available lands. Pro-
duction would increase enormously and the inflated for-
tunes now arising from the almost diabolical land dealing
would be impossible.
Add to this the national or social ownership of arable
lands and socially-used areas, just as we own the great
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
national parks and national forests, of such vast areas as
can be cultivated and developed on a large scale, as na-
tional, state, or municipal undertakings, and we have a
land policy that removes this one first gift of God to man
from the domain of mere private greed and exploitation.
Here is the first imperative plank of a Christian program
for human freedom.
2. Machinery. Coming to the realm of industry, a
penny postage stamp may be taken as the symbol of a
Christian social policy. Our postal system, including now
the parcel post, is conducted by the people, for the people,
on principles of public welfare, universal good will, and
democracy. If we add a more democratic organization of
the employees, and of their work, in spirit and policy, this
is the direction of a Christian system.
The people in various countries now own and collec-
tively administer schools, water works, street railways,
docks and harbors, railways, telegraphs, telephones, etc.
Once entered upon, this policy is never forsaken. San
Francisco buys a short street railway, and so successful
does it prove that the city at once extends the line, and
seriously contemplates municipal ownership of its entire
street railway system.
This collectivism extends the domain of the wealth that
is common. It lessens and limits the wealth of the plu-
tocracy, and it tends to secure the necessary private indi-
vidual wealth while cutting the arteries of huge private
fortunes made out of public utiHties. Such public owner-
ship is thus a defense against private property for the
hand that creates it.
PRIVATE PROPERTY.
Roughly speaking, there are three kinds of ownership
of property. There is the ownership of purely personal
30
Social Program for a Militant Christianity
property, such as home, furniture, clothing, books, per-
sonal income, and purchases therefrom for personal and
family use — in short, all the necessities, comforts, and
even satisfactions of life. This kind of private ownership
should be defended and conserved, and indeed we should
aim to make every individual and every family secure in
the ownership of these things and the labor necessary to
obtain them.
A second kind of private property is the natural sav-
ings that normal prudence and thrift and foresight lay
aside for future use. Such private property, as a reserve
against emergencies, should be preserved to all. We
should seek to increase it and secure it against the private
looting now proceeding so respectably in financial circles.
But there is a third kind of private property that
should become public property — that is, property in the
most important means of production, or equipment of
large scale industry. At least the most efficiently organ-
ized industries should become public property. This is
the kind of property that is used to rob, exploit, and en-
slave the people, and actually to deny the workers any
considerable degree of the necessary, personal, private
property or private savings, while enriching beyond the
dreams of avarice the owners of these industries.
The collective ownership and control of this kind of
property will end the present capitalistic domination of
human Hfe. A one-cent postage stamp may symbolize the
idea and preach this program.
With abolition of land monopoly and private control of
large scale industry and the products of labor for private
profit, and the security of the state for the savings of the
people, human labor and human life will be emancipated
from economic dependence and economic servitude. The
evils, the industrial tragedies, the social hells of our pres-
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
ent system will be abolished. The next great stage of
human freedom — industrial and economic freedom — will
be added to the religious and political freedoms already
attained.
The new era will present new strifes, new aristocracies,
new aims, new goals, but other generations unborn will
face the problems arising therein. Ours is the glorious
task of completing the physical emancipation of the race,
and launching our children and children's children upon
an age of social and economic brotherhood in which we
believe the fair flowers of intellectual and spiritual beauty
will bloom as never before in this garden of the Lord.
FINAL APPEAL FOR ACTION.
In presenting this minimum social program for a mili-
tant Christianity, it is not necessary to abate our zeal for
the salvation of souls. Any theology that proceeds on the
basis that a human being is more sacred than the profit
that is made out of his blood and labor, will do ; and any
honest zeal for souls may afford enough simple regard for
human beings to rescue them from the devouring maw of
the mammon gods of capitalism.
I therefore make this appeal : That in the name of Him
who died for men, we incorporate into the radius of Chris-
tian passion, purpose and program, an intelligent, aggres-
sive, and militant attack on the present social order, not
upon its evil fruits with petty reforms, but on its basic
roots and principles, with constructive political and social
programs, for its abolition.
One whole quarter of a century has now passed in
which the church should have been in the van, in the so-
cial movement. The church should have been the cham-
pion and deliverer of the poor, and the toilers in the past
twenty-five years, in which private individuals and cor-
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Social Program for a Militant Christianity
porations have systematically and under the aegis of law
robbed and defrauded and degraded the masses. There
has been no eye to pity, no arm to save.
Now, therefore, as the profit-hunger of the plutocracy
becomes more insatiable, and the iron heel of the priv-
ileged classes becomes more ruthless ; now, as the masses
are beginning to awake from political deception and moral
stupor; now, as the simple program of social ownership
of wealth-producing equipment begins to be seen as the
new principle of a world's freedom, it is the duty of the
preachers of the gospel of the lowly Carpenter to re-
nounce their allegiance and moral support of the capitalist
system, as men once before renounced their support to the
system of chattel slavery.
Even this late, as the battle grows fierce, between man
and mammon, the church should come up to the help of
the Lord against the mighty, unjust Goliaths of capital-
ism, the anarchs of plutocracy.
We should repent of our past spiritual neglect that has
allowed the monstrous social injustice to grow to such
awful proportions. We should lay down our lives for the
sheep and deliver the people from the economic injustice
that devours them.
Think of the number of the preachers of the gospel, of
their ramifying influence in all the cities and villages, and
into the homes of the people ! Think of the immense force
of talent and abihty of the ministry ! Think of the tre-
mendous physical and material equipment, which the peo-
ple have paid for out of their earnings, which are in poj^-
session of the church, in the shape of lands, and church
buildings, and schools !
Just ponder for a moment, what a world upheaval
would result if the power of the pulpit and the church
was ranged on the side of overthrowing this unchristian
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
system of capitalism, and of establishing economic justice.
Think of the new thrill of hope that would stir the
hearts of the masses if the tremendous moral and spiritual
machinery of the church were a menace to the rule and
ruin of the profit-mongers ! Think of the tremendous reli-
gious revival of genuine Christianity that would result
from such a stand.
The church wonders what is the matter; why she is
losing her hold on the masses ; why she is so powerless
to stem the tide of materialism and mammonism. Here
is your secret. Let the church show a solid front to the
fundamental injustices of the present social order; let the
church stand forth as the champion of the poor against
economic oppression ; let the church preach the teachings
of Jesus, and point out their social appHcation on the field
of labor and industry, and the greatest moral and spirit-
ual awakening the world has ever known will break forth.
But let the church continue to give any kind of moral
backing to the present system and she will become a
hissing and a by-word among men, and will be found in
the end apostate to the Christ.
All this effort and program for economic justice should
not be a side issue, an incident, something to turn the
church away from the mind of Christ, but the most nat-
ural, normal, sane, and simple outpouring of the spirit of
Him who was moved with compassion on the multitudes,
and whom the ruhng class of his day put to death as an
interrupter of their ruthless disregard of human lives.
Take the substance and spirit and general trend of this
minimum social program, and I believe you have the next
grand wave conquest of the Christ-spirit in human history.
''Stand, thou, where all the brave of ages stood,
Help mold the brotherhood."
•34
Chapter III.
WOMAN AND SOCIAL PROGRESS.
BY EDWARD ARTHUR WICHER.
One of the most conspicuous features of the social life
of our time is the movement among women in behalf oi
women. It is at once the result of a profound social
movement in the recent past, and the promise of a more
wide-reaching movement in the immediate future. It is
probably the most significant of all the social signs of
our times. From the side of industry, it is the assertion
of the desire of women for a more independent economic
status. From the point of view of the interest of the state,
it is the assertion that democracy is not complete until
women have a voice in the laws by which both men and
women are to be governed. It is indeed also an assertion
that women cannot be fully represented by men, however
intelligent and sympathetic these men may be ; that there
are some things important to the well-being of the race,
that no man ever sees or ever can see; that the state
needs the work of women for the solving of some of its
most important problems, such as the final abolition of
war, and the suppression of the liquor traffic and its at-
tendant evils.
The very fact that such a movement exists is evidence
that the emancipation of women is practically already ef-
fected. They are now able to cause their voice to be
heard in every legislative hall and committee room of
the nation. Every political leader is careful of the influ-
ence of the women's clubs.
Now, all the aims of the feminist movement may be
good and sound. It is not within the scope of the present
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
address to discuss directly any of these matters. They
are merely stated in order to show the importance of the
subject. But for Christian men and women, eager to
reaHze the will of God in a Christian state, it is evident
that there can be no solution of the problem of the place
of woman without a reference to the teaching and prac-
tice of the New Testament. And in anything so funda-
mental to the right of humanity and the truth of religion
as the proper conception of the duty and happiness of
woman, we shall not interrogate our sacred Scriptures
in vain. We shall find, if not specific directions for the
settlement of each separate problem, at least such gen-
eral principles as shall lay down the lines of a harmon-
ious social structure, and help us to determine the appro-
priate answer in a multitude of details.
/. The Status of Woman in the Ancient World.
In antiquity the Hebrews, and in a lesser degree the
Teutons and Saxons, had a pre-eminence in their treat-
ment of woman. But in general among the ancient na-
tions, both Oriental and Occidental, the condition of wo-
mankind, both in law and custom, seems to have been
one of abject degradation. Her station was always much
lower than that of man ; she was looked upon either as
his slave, or as the manager of his household arrange-
ments. In particular it does not seem to have occurred to
men before the Christian era that a woman could be capa-
ble of the holiest and noblest emotions, or that she could
be inspired to truly great deeds and sacrifices.
In every early state the parents, according to their own
pleasure, disposed of the hands and hearts of their daugh-
ters, who were married to men who had never wooed
them, or even consulted them about the matter. Love was
not the motive for entering into the relation of husband
and wife, but a man purchased with money a woman for
36
Woman and Social Progress
a wife. The consequence was that she was brought into
entire subjection to her husband. In general, the law-
givers of the ancient world did but little to mitigate the
condition of women. In Babylonia, where the status of
woman was freer and higher than in any previous state,
this statement still holds true. The blood rights of the
head man of the house over all the women of the house
are presupposed. The legal enactments were intended to
make secure the position of the husband, in all his custo-
mary rights, over against the blood rights of the male
kindred of his wife. Among all Oriental nations, polyg-
amy was an established institution.
In Egypt, the perfection of the development of art coin-
cided with the degradation of Egyptian morals. The
women of Egypt were constantly watched in order to pre-
vent them from being immoral, and according to all Egyp-
tian tradition, they were grossly immoral. They were en-
tirely without education, and were taught nothing except
to make themselves seductive to their husbands. The low
view held by men of women always reacts upon the
men themselves ; and in such a society the high chiv-
alry of noble manhood and the tender constancy of pure
womanhood are alike impossible.
Among the Greeks, even in Homeric times, dependence
upon man was the abiding lot of woman. She was first
in subjection to her father, who had absolute power over
her, and after she was married, she passed under the law
of her husband, whose power was also absolute. And
yet in the heroic age of Greece a large measure of per-
sonal freedom of movement was allowed to the women of
the household, which was afterwards denied them. Thus
we find such noble women as Alcestia, Andromache, and
Penelope, in whom the ancient dignity of the Indo-
Germanic race come to its finest expression before the
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
advent of Christianity. And yet even these were not
free. Penelope was a prisoner in her own house ; and
every widow whose husband had been slain in battle,
became the prize of the victor. Those highest in the so-
ciety of the Homeric age were not exempt, as Hector
laments when taking leave of his wife, Andromache.
But in the period of the florescence of Attic art and
Hellenic power, there had been a sad degradation of fam-
ily life from the simplicity and confidence of the Homeric
age. Perhaps the Greece of Pericles was too close to the
shores of Asia. Or can it be that the Persians, whom the
Greeks had defeated at Marathon, had in their turn over-
come the earlier social ideas of their conquerors? If so,
Greece soon paid the penalty. For the brief, glorious age
of Pericles, which had risen upon the joy and inspiration
of her resistance to the Asiatic tyrant, passed away be-
cause she had succumbed to the vices of an Asiatic harem.
In the historic age of Greece, the condition of women was
not very different from what it had been in the kingdom
of Babylon and Nineveh. The one duty required of wives
was that they be the mothers of legitimate children ;
while the system of keeping hetasrse supplied the lack of
female society at the public feasts of the men. Under
such conditions, one certainly could not speak of marri-
age as a holy institution, based on love and fidelity.
One great source of degradation to womankind among
ancient peoples was the sensuality of religion itself. Mul-
titudes of women were prostituted in the honor of the
deity. The places of worship were often the scenes of
unbridled lust. Thebes in Egypt, Patara in Asia Minor,
the groves of Daphne near Antioch, the rock-crowned cit-
adel of Corinth, are a few of the sacred places made fa-
mous by their licentiousness. And the price of shame
flowed into the treasuries of the temple.
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Woman and Social Progress
<b'
Another source of wrong was deeply rooted in the fact
that the women of all classes who could afford the custom,
were deprived of almost all freedom of action. They were
shut in by walls and regulations.
Among the Roman people, the treatment of women,
especially in the early period of the repubHc, before the
Romans passed under the influence of the Greeks and the
eastern nations, was finer and higher than among other
peoples. But here, too, in the eyes of the law, she was
under a perpetual tutelage. When she passed from under
the authority of her father, it was only to go under that of
her husband. Or, in the case of the death of her father
while she was still unmarried, under the authority of her
nearest male relative. In India, the ancient system still
survives, the system of the primitive Indo-Germanic tribe ;
and even the Hindu widow frequently becomes the ward
of her son.
But one advantage the woman of classical antiquity
had over the woman of the Orient. She was not required
to share her place of honor with another wife. Monog-
amy had the sanction of law and custom both in Greece
and Rome. But in both Greece and Rome, marriage was
an institution framed in the interest of the state.
//. Status of Woman Among the Hebrew People.
All the social relations of the Hebrews were permeated
with the spirit of their religion. Purity of the inner
life, deliverance from the slavery of the senses, the con-
secration and sacrifice of the whole being unto God —
these were the high aims which the Torah set before the
confessors of Jehovah. Such a religion could not fail to
find within its teaching some place for womankind.
Upon the women of Israel there was not laid any such
slavish burden as upon the women of Assyria, Babylonia,
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
Phoenicia, or any related people. She was by no means a
creature of will-less subjection.
As we consider the narrative of the creation of woman,
contained in Genesis 2 : 20-22, we see already in this story
the features of a higher ideal of womankind. Here the
Lord God said, "I will make an helpmeet for him," that is
to correspond to him. Among all God's works of cre-
ation, woman is the only one who, both in bodily and
spiritual powers, answers wholly unto man. She corres-
ponds to him, she reciprocates his entire higher life, she
is his other self. Therefore it follows of necessity that
the place of woman, in reference to man, is not one of
slavish inferiority, but one of entire equality of personality
with him. Her existence, her worth, her thought, are
co-ordinate w^ith his, and ends of equal importance.
On the other side, the Mosaic narrative describes the
woman as the helpmeet of the man. The sphere of her
calling does not lie outside of that of the man, also not
above or below that of the man. Both are linked to-
gether in the innermost relations. The wife is called upon
to share, with fidelity and intelligence, the burden of care
of her husband ; she must take her place by his side as the
gentle and loving guide of his upward way. From this
word "helpmeet," there streams a ray of light down the
long page of Israel's history.
But unhappily in New Testament times, in Palestine,
we find the same disintegrating influences at work upon
the life of the home as we find in the corrupt centers of
population of Greece and Rome. The laxity of divorce
was quite as striking as among the Gentiles.
///. The Change Which Jesus is Making in the World's
Conception of Woman.
It is true that Jesus did not attack directly those social
customs which had pressed the publican and sinner into
40
Woman and Social Progress
lives of infamy and shame. That he did not do so was in
harmony with the whole plan of his ministry. Not that
he was indifferent to these, or any, social wrongs ; but
he took the higher way in dealing with them. He im-
parted eternal principles of justice and truth which would
work from within outwards, and rectify the specific evils
of the world. The Friend of Mary Magdalene gave to
the world a gospel of infinite tenderness and purity, that
would work and move until all wrong should be redressed
and all iniquity purged away in the advent of the king-
dom of God.
Many of the profoundest self-revelations that Jesus had
to give were made to women, sometimes even to women
who had sinned.
As we study the narratives of Christ's dealing with
women there emerge the greater principles of his king-
dom. We should thoughtfully ponder his relations with
his mother, Mary, with the household of Martha and
Mary, with the Samaritan woman at the well, with the
sinful women who gathered around him for cleansing
and instruction.
Let us group our thoughts for a moment around one
typical incident in the life of our Lord. When he spoke
to the Samaritan woman at the well, she asked him, ''How
is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me who am
a woman of Samaria?" In this narrative there were three
amazing situations : He was a Jew, and he talked with a
Samaritan. He was a man and he talked with a woman.
He was a religious teacher and he talked with a sinful
woman. His conduct was revolutionary. No self-respect-
ing Jew would have any dealings with a Samaritan. No
man would think of entering into a serious discussion with
a woman.
41
Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
Christ abolished the distinction between man and
woman as responsible human beings in the sight of God
and of his church. So far as concerns the Jewish reli-
gion of the synagogue in New Testament times, woman
had no place in the synagogue, just as she has no place
in the mosque to-day. It required ten adult males to
organize a synagogue, and women and children did not
count. It remained for Jesus to receive women into the
holiest, most intim.ate relations of religion. Still in the
Jews' Morning Prayer, the congregation stand and thank
God, in three successive benedictions, "That thou hast not
caused me to be born a Gentile ; that thou hast not caused
me to be born a slave ; that thou hast not caused me to be
born a woman." Over against this we may set the words
of St. Paul, ''There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there
can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and
female ; for ye are all one man in Christ Jesus."
42
Chapter IV.
EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS.
BY THOMAS W. BUTCHER.
The present educational unrest in America is due in
large measure to an economic change through which we
are passing as a result of the disappearance forever of
our western lands. An increasing population must have
an outlet ; without it the weak perish, only the strong sur-
vive. For centuries England has used her colonies for
this purpose ; Holland has used the East Indies and has
drained her own lakes as an outlet for her surplus popula-
tion; Germany has used the slogan, "Made in Germany,"
to open opportunities for her congested population.
Like any other stream, the stream of humanity flows in
the direction of least resistance. For our own people, we
have always had unoccupied lands. When a community
became crowded, the young men went West and estab-
lished homes on our pubHc lands. If our western lands
could have lasted another hundred years, the economic
change through which we are now passing would not have
come until the next century. Agriculture, as conducted
on new land, required no technical training; the schools
were free to offer such instruction as they would, with
no one to question their work, for untrained labor could
always go out West. With our western lands gone and the
pick and shovel in the hands of the Greek, the Italian,
and the Mexican, untrained American labor finds no mar-
ket, and condemnation falls upon the schools. A system
of education, rarely questioned for a hundred years, is
43
Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
assailed by newspaper, magazine, and public speaker be-
cause it fails to do what it has never done, provide its
product with the means of earning a living. Unconsci-
ously the public is demanding that the schools create a
new "out West." This will be done through the conver-
sion of the products of the earth into new forms of eco-
nomic goods ; there is no escape from it, we are to become
a manufacturing people and the cry for a training of the
hand will not cease. Here we find an explanation for the
outcry against the school curriculum as the men and
women of this audience knew it, and here we find the ba-
sis for the whole manual movement in America.
Most revolts go too far; they become destructive of
good as well as of evil. This one threatens to leave little
in the school curriculum that does not give training which
can be sold for dollars and cents. Communities and
States invest money in education for protection and for
profit ; protection because ignorance and lawlessness are
almost synonymous terms, profit because through the de-
velopment of its citizens the State increases its own
strength and resources. If only protection were sought,
the State might safely require nothing of the schools be-
yond a solution of the bread-and-butter problem, for it is
the contented citizen who is the safe citizen, and the man
who can support himself and those dependent upon him
is usually a contented citizen.
Like individuals, the State must have more than a safe
investment ; it must have an investment that returns a
profit — a positive profit — one that gives back to the State
something more than a contented citizenship, important
as such a citizenship is. We must never forget that one
of the large functions of the public school is to discover
to the individual and to the State, talent that might other-
wise have remained undiscovered. The Standard Oil
44
Education and Social Proorcss
^> '
Company has prospectors out at all times looking for new
fields, the baseball manager has his scouts out every sea-
son looking for new men. The public school should al-
ways be prospecting and scouting for the State. The
mental and spiritual gifts of every mind should be dis-
covered. Every talent of every citizen in the State in-
creases its wealth. When a Babcock gives, without pat-
ent, a milk tester to the dairymen of his State, he adds so
much to the wealth of his State ; when a college professor
discovers that a current of electricity will thaw a frozen,
underground pipe, he makes a contribution to the wealth
of his State ; equally true it is that when a teacher in the
public schools discovers in a pupil a talent for literature
or music or art, she adds to the wealth of her State.
Wealth does not consist of things alone. The paintings
of an Abbey, the poems of a Field, the soul of a John
Brown — these are wealth without which the nation would
be poorer than if she lost the contributions of a Burbank
or an Edison.
We hear a good deal these days about the practical in
education. Republics must have leaders and these lead-
ers must come from the ranks of the common people ;
there is no other course. The American school can offer
no more practical course than one that has for its pur-
pose the discovery and development of leadership. I have
somewhere read that England's investment in the Suez
Canal pays twenty per cent. If Eaton and Oxford had
cost a thousand times what they did cost, and Gladstone
had been their only product, the investment in those
schools would have paid better than the investment in the
Suez Canal. The schools must help to solve the bread-
and-butter problem, but they must never lose sight of the
fact that a love of the beautiful, and courage, and unself-
ishness, and leadership, and kindness of heart, and human
45
Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
character are the highest forms of wealth. Why not all
of these in some degree for the laborer and the mechanic?
In the top gallery of the Royal Opera House, in Berlin,
I have seen the German laborer, leaning out from his
badly-located seat or standing, music in hand, following
the score during a production of "Siegfried," or ''Tann-
hauser," or "Rhinegold." I have seen him with his fam-
ily, as he wandered through the art galleries of the city,
feasting his eyes upon the treasures stored there. Is he
not a better and therefore a safer man because in the
public school he learned to love good music and good art,
instead of the ragtime of a hurdy-gurdy and the gaudy
chromo of some advertising concern? What matters it if
this man does work in a ditch? Does he not at times
enter realms which the mere physical can never enter,
and, by reason of that fact does he not know better the
content of the word ''manhood," and the word ''Father-
land"? His feet are in the ditch, but his spirit is not
there, and if he lived in America, his spirit would some
day lift his feet out of that ditch. A man's occupation
counts for little in a republic, so long as his occupation be
an honorable one. We do not classify men according to
their occupations. Manhood is the basis of our classi-
fication, and the pubHc schools should see to it that the
man who works in the mine or who digs in the ditch shall
catch a tip-toe glimpse of things which lie beyond the
borders of his physical needs.
When you ask the average man what change he would
make in the school curriculum, he tells you he would like
to go back to the old-time school which taught only the
common branches and gave a boy a secure foundation
upon which to build. This average man has forgotten
how poorly he spelled when he came out of school, and
how little, outside of the text-book, he knew about arith-
46
Education and Social Proirress
^
metic. Lists of questions in spelling and arithmetic given
in Springfield, Massachusetts, and Cleveland, Ohio, forty
to sixty years ago, have been given in recent years to chil-
dren of the same age, and the results published. The
children of to-day spell better and know more arithmetic
than did the children of half a century ago. Measured
by the standards of to-day, the schools have never given
a solution to the bread-and-butter problem. The fact that
they did not solve the problem was not brought home to
us until competition became sharp and the untrained boy
found no market for his labor except where the ignorant
foreigner offers his labor for sale.
We are Jiot going back to the old-time school. It gave
neither vocational training nor a well-balanced develop-
ment of the mind ; it gave little culture. It did give the
pupil, in a crude way, a few of the simplest tools needed
in the field of knowledge, but it did not teach him how to
use them. We shall have neither the old school nor the
present school, but we shall never wholly cast aside either
one. Omitting the trade schools, which America has not
yet developed, our schools offer substantially the same
courses offered throughout the civilized world. These
courses represent the accumulated thought along educa-
tional fines of the best minds of the centuries, and I, for
one, am unwilling to cast them ruthlessly aside ; they rep-
resent the thought of Lowell, and Garfield, and Angell,
and Eliot, and Wilson, and a host of other scarcely less
illustrious Americans. Is it not possible that too much
reading of the magazines has made us mad? It is high
time that some man with authority to speak, stand up and
shout, "Stop ! let us sit down and think the whole matter
over. Modification and adaptation, not revolution, is
what we need.''
47
Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
The city of Gary has a message for all of us, and that
message is, "Work out your own problem." The Gary
idea is suited to every city and every community in the
United States, the Gary course of study is suited to few
cities or communities in the United States. As communi-
ties as a whole differ, so individuals within a community
differ. Not every boy and girl should learn a trade, and
not every boy and girl should go to college. Beyond the
mere rudiments, courses for boys and girls should be
widely different except where they are to enter and remain
in the same occupation or profession. The course of
study has sinned, not against the whole school popula-
tion, but against the boy who is going into industrial or
business life, and against the girl who is going into the
home. That the schools have sinned against these two
large classes is apparent to most of us. The repeated at-
tempts of the coeducational colleges and women's col-
leges of the country to show an incredulous public that
they are preparing their girls to become wives and moth-
ers only serve to indicate that they themselves believe
proofs other than the products of the schools are needed.
But now that the boy who is to become a mechanic or a
merchant is to receive attention in the school course and
special training is to be given to the girl who is to occupy
the most exalted position ever attained by a woman — the
head place in a home — it does not follow that the entire
curriculum of the present-day school should be aban-
doned. If we are not swept completely off our feet by this
movement toward the practical, we shall probably be able
to see that the old courses should be kept and the new ones
added — that the training offered in the schools should be
as varied as are the occupations and talents of humanity.
In this connection there is one fact that must not be
overlooked ; schools oft'ering varied courses are expensive
4S
Education and Social Progress
<b>
and schools offering a single course of study are inex-
pensive. Many of the courses which the new education
is recognizing in the school curriculum are demanded by
the public because these courses are no longer offered in
the home. Within the memory of people in this audience,
the clothing of entire families was made in the home from
wool as it came from the back of the sheep. The shoes
for the family, the harness for the horses and yoke for
the oxen were made and mended in the home. Soap and
hominy were made, fruit canned, meat cured, carpets
woven — all in the home. The children learned to do all
of these things as well as to make their own toys. The
modern home has turned all of this important training
over to the schools. If the new school costs more money
than the old — and it does cost more money — the home is
to blame, not the school.
The school of the future in America must not only
offer a wide range of courses, but it must parallel these
courses sufficiently to make it possible for a student to
change from one kind of school to another without seri-
ous loss of time. In a country Hke Germany, where class
lines are definitely drawn, the demand for parallel courses
does not exist, but in a republic it must always be made
easy for a student to change his line of work when his
unfolding powers give him a new vision of life's possi-
bilities. Since this vision may not come to him until years
after he has left the school, it is important that his school
course be somewhat more than technical.
Much is being made of the play instinct of the child.
Systems of education have been worked out by which
a child may take his entire school course without perform-
ing a single disagreeable task, the assumption being that
all of his work may be organized and presented in such
a way as to make him really enjoy it. At first glance,
49
Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
such a system would seem to be wanting in nothing, but
upon closer examination we are incHned to doubt its ef-
ficiency in the development of character. I have never
been quite able in my educational creed to get away from
a motto which a teacher of mine kept on her blackboard
month after month — *' Strength is born of struggle."
Strength may be born of other things, but this teacher
evidently did not think so, for she never mentioned any
source but struggle. As the years have passed, I have
found myself agreeing with her. I have observed that
the boy whose indulgent parents have made everything
easy for him, is a weakling. He really works at nothing.
He plays at an occupation until the novelty is gone and
then he leaves it. He lives with the woman he marries
until her physical beauty begins to wane, and then he de-
serts her. Duty may be in his vocabulary, but it is not and
can never be in his character, for the only way to make
duty a part of a man's character is to work it into his life
while his character is forming. Patterns are sometimes
stamped upon cheap grades of cloth after the cloth is
woven, but the patterns in a Persian rug are woven in as
the rug is made. Strength is born of struggle, and any
system of education that leaves the disagreeable wholly
out, that has no place for hard work, that fails to teach
the unselfishness which the word ''duty" implies, is not
only weak, but vicious. I Hke the definition of education
given by Thomas Huxley, "A training that gives to a man
the ability to do the thing he ought to do when it ought
to be done, regardless of whether he feels like doing- it
or not."
The world has too many people who are trying to get
something for nothing- — people who are respectable gam-
blers. Such people seek to make their way through the
world on their wits. They are never willing to pay the
50
Education and Social Progress
full price of the things they want. We find them in the
schools. They seek easy methods, easy courses, short
courses. Backed by their parents, they ask to be excused
from mathematics or science — work in any department
which they find difficult. Certain educational authorities
of the day have responded to this demand and declare
that there is nothing in formal training — that a student
derives benefit from those branches of study, only, which
he expects to use — that training in a given field does not
carry over into another field except in so far as the two
fields have elements in common. Within limits, there is
logic in this contention, but the evil growing out of the
theory is the one I have just described, that of avoiding
all the time the drudgery of school work. It is an exag-
gerated form of the play idea. If I were to ask the men
of this audience what, in their experience, made the great-
est contribution to the power they now possess, I fancy
that most of them would say, ''Drudgery." The chief dif-
ference between success and failure lies in men's capacity
to endure the disagreeable, the drudgery of life. Mere
drudgery of itself, avails nothing, but the drudgery that
is inseparably connected with the every-day tasks of every
man is always potent. In every man's life there come
dark days, dark years — years in which he feels that he is
not going forward at all. This is the point at which the
weakling fails. He changes his occupation or he quits.
But the strong man goes on, knowing that the stream of
his life is only temporarily checked, that the floods are
gathering and that a break must come. From these weak-
lings I have just described come the malcontents of so-
ciety. These are the men, who, in middle life and old age
rail at the success of men about them. They demand an
article for which they never paid, and when they do not
get it they join the hosts of the discontented and insist
51
Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
upon revolutionizing the whole political organism. The
theory that the world owes any man a living is danger-
ously false. With our western lands gone, our popula-
tion increasing rapidly, the law of diminishing returns
operating in our mining and agricultural regions, the
struggle in America will inevitably become fiercer and the
army of the discontented will increase. It is a mistake
to suppose that the army of the unemployed is kept up
in a different way from other armies. It has its recruit-
ing stations in homes and school-rooms throughout the
land. The state cannot reach the home, but it can reach
the school. Compulsory attendance laws have never been
enforced in America. If the men in America who are to-
day idle, had received two more years of schooHng, thou-
sands of them would be employed and other thousands
would have savings upon which to live. Ignorance, idle-
ness, and improvidence are three giants which have
stalked together through the earth in all ages, leaving suf-
fering and ruin in their path. Sometimes I have thought
that what a child studies is not so important after all.
The important thing is that he learn to study — that he
learn to work — that he learn to do the necessary drudgery
of life. Let the schools make the work offered attractive,
let them help every child find his place in the world and
equip him for filling it, but let them never cease to work
into the lives of our children the feeling that towering
above all human skill, above all of the accomplishments
of genius, all appreciation of the beautiful, all ministra-
tions to the physical needs of the race, is that something
that makes the captain of the crew, and the operator at
his post, sending out the "S. O. S.," the last men to leave
the sinking ship. We may eliminate the disagreeable
from a boy's school course, but we cannot eliminate the
52
Education and Social Progress
disagreeable from his after life if that life is to be lived
out where the world's work is done.
The citizens of a republic lack discipline. Always
eager to make laws, they are seldom vigilant in their en-
forcement. The citizen of a republic is an individualist.
He does not like restraint. In the last analysis he wants
to do pretty much as he pleases. If there is not a way
around the law, and there usually is, he ignores it or sets
about to have it repealed. He is not so much interested
in what is good for the whole people as he is interested
in what he thinks is good for him.
In monarchies, the individual is taught in the home and
in the school to subordinate his personal interests to those
of the whole people as represented by the government.
In republics, generally and in our own especially, this
teaching is neglected. Unconsciously the spirit of selfish-
ness is taught. America has the only complete, free, pub-
lic-school system in the world. Other nations have only
worked out in part the problem of educating at public
expense the vv^hole people. In America the state owns
the schools — the state determines what the instruction
shall be. The fathers intended that the schools should,
first of all, contribute directly to the strength of the state
by giving preparation for citizenship. In the years we
have drifted away from this idea. In no schools in the
civilized world is the word "sacrifice" less used, is the
spirit of loyalty less taught than in our own schools.
There is not a school in America, outside of West Point
and Annapolis, which has for its purpose the training of
the student for service to the Government. We have
erroneously assumed that the ability to think and the skill
necessary to earn a living constitute good citizenship.
Citizenship, we have said, is a by-product. The greatest
lesson ever learned in this world is the lesson of obedi-
53
Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
ence. The freest man is the man who obeys the most
laws — the laws of his government, the laws of God.
America does not teach this lesson in the home or in the
school. The spectacle of a boy in knee pants leaving
school because things have not gone to suit him can be
witnessed only in America. A strike in the upper grades
or in the high school with a committee of students treat-
ing with the Board of Education is American. The ad-
mission by parents to every school man in the land that
they cannot control their children who are yet in knee
pants and short dresses, is American — wholly American.
Good citizenship can never come from such sources. The
schools must insist upon obedience if they insist upon
nothing else. There must be authority even in a republic.
Lack of it is the rock upon which republics in all ages
have gone to pieces. They have lacked coherence, soli-
darity. The United States is no exception to the rule.
Our wide extent of territory, east and west, north and
south, gives us conflicting industrial and commercial in-
terests. We are a nation of nationalities. Races which
throughout the centuries have been in conflict across
the seas are attempting to live side by side in America.
History teaches us that the nations which have stood the
test of the centuries have had solidarity of interest, soli-
darity of race. The cohesive force of loyalty to country
has held them bound together. Let America learn this
lesson, and through her public schools bind together the
conflicting, the centrifugal, forces of this republic.
Social progress through education demands an en-
riched course of study, not a new course of study. The
school must help to put meaning into the words ''Made
in the United States," for we are to become a manu-
facturing people. It must have always in mind the com-
plete development of the whole man — every power, every
54
Education and Social Progress
gift, every possibility of his life that will increase his
usefulness to society. It must continue to give culture.
It must teach the dignity of honest toil, but above all
else, social progress demands that the school shall give
to the state an intelligent and useful citizenship.
55
Chapter V.
COMMERCIALIZED VICE AND SOCIAL
PROGRESS.
BY DR. KATE WALLER BARRETT.
I am very much pleased indeed to speak to you this
afternoon. I am pleased to be here and to take a part
in such a great social congress, and to represent in it a
phase of work which I think has shown as much progress
as any, and that is the elimination of commercialized vice.
I have the privilege of being the president of the Florence
Crittenden Mission, which has seventy-five homes for
girls, and also of being the representative of the L^nited
States Government to look after and care for alien girls
who may be brought here at this time in order that they
may be present during the exposition.
It is almost impossible, as we look about us to-day, to
realize how much has been accomplished and what won-
derful things have been done. I cannot help smiling when
I think of the characteristic attitude of many people to-
ward this work ; how ignorant and how unscientific, and
how anxious they have been to help ; and how emotional
and sentimental they have often been. We have an ex-
ample in the great interest awakened by the question of
the White Slave Traffic, and the laws in regard to it.
Now we are beginning to understand that a good deal of
the movement has been ineffective because of the appeal
to sentiment rather than facts, and as one of the older
workers in the movement, I can honestly say that I am
glad that the wave of sentiment has gone by, and that we
56
Commercialized Vice and Social Progress
<S'
have now reached the point where we can do something
constructive and practical.
Do you realize that to-day there are hardly ten cities
in the United States of over one hundred thousand inhab-
itants, which have a segregated district? All the others
have been eliminated, and where they have not, there are
movements on foot to take steps to eliminate them. It is
almost impossible to realize that it has been such a few
years, because, when I used to travel from city to city,
there was hardly a place where I went where they did
not have a segregated district. There was one in every
city of any size. And this segregated district was con-
tinued, not merely by the evil men and women of the city,
not only by the vicious elements, by those who used it, but
by the intelligent men and women who had arrived at the
conclusion that this was the only way that the social evil
could be dealt with, and so the law breakers were sepa-
rated. The greatest difficulty has been with the business
element in the community. They did not believe that this
element could be eliminated, and there are still many good
men and women who will say to you that it is better to
segregate vice rather than scatter it throughout the com-
munity.
I want to say to you, as I have always said to every
group of men and women like you. that if there is no
other solution except segregation or scattering, that you
need a new set of city officials, and new ideas in your city.
If the laws are not enforced, you had better get rid of
your officials and get somebody that will enforce them.
Yet for many years this was the attitude even of intelli-
gent officials.
Not long ago there was a commission appointed in the
District of Columbia, and as I live near there, and am
in t6uch with conditions in the city there, I went to one
57
Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
of these commissioners, a man who stood very high in
the community, and in philanthropic and social activities.
I went to see him v»^ith a group of ladies, asking that the
segregated district in Washington should be done away
with, and he sat there in his magnificent office, behind
his splendid desk, and looked at me and said: "Mrs. Bar-
rett, you are very familiar with conditions in Washing-
ton ; what would you suggest that I do with these girls ?
Where could they live? Could you suggest any policy
that would be practical and effective ? I am sure the com-
missioners would be able and willing to put into effective
law any such plan."
Now, I had known of many women who had been
caught in that trap, who have tried to tell these men how
to run their business and make some plan for them. And
I looked him square in the face, and I said : ''When I take
the oath of office as commissioner, to enforce the laws,
I will not go to you and ask you how to enforce them,
or what your advice is. I should have some idea of what
to do before taking the oath of office. If I found out
that I couldn't enforce the law, instead of continuing to
hold the office, I would give it up, and go before the peo-
ple and ask them what they wanted done."
It has been just that sort of fallacious argument which
has kept this vice alive, feeding on the best of our youth.
As I sat here this morning listening to the speakers, I
couldn't help realizing how this new movement for the
elimination of commercialized vice is bound to be suc-
cessful because it is based on different conditions than
have hitherto existed. We know how Victor Hugo re-
ferred to the immoral woman as the eternal priestess of
the ages. We have been told that she has been from the
beginning and will always be. I do not know that I care
to controvert either of these statements, but I do say that
58
Commercialized Vice and Social Progress
commercialized vice can be done away with, and that
the association with our civic and national institutions can
be divorced. (Applause.)
So we feel that this movement has a practical basis on
the men's side. I believe the greatest power behind this
movement has been the high conception of the brother-
hood of man and our moral responsibility for the welfare
of every one in the community we live in. I believe this
is the main fight, but it has been strengthened by an ap-
preciation of the facts and an appeal to the business men
of the community. That was dwelt upon by one of the
speakers this morning. The business men are beginning
to realize that law breakers and gamblers are no longer
an asset, but a liability, to a city. This has had a great
effect. When we first took up this fight, we thought it
was local, but we find that it has reached out into all the
avocations of life. We do know now the value to the
merchants of the segregated district in Washington,
which was recently closed, after existing in the same part
of the city ever since the Civil War. The camp follow-
ers came into the city with the army, and after the army
was discharged they remained there, and this district has
continued to exist there, almost under the shadow of the
White House, until last March.
For years we have been going to Congress and to the
commissioners to urge the elimination of this district ; but
Washington was a long way from the home States of
the Congressmen, and they were indifferent; and you
knovv^ people in Washington have no votes.
These Congressmen were so far away from home that
it didn't matter to them, and they didn't care whether we
liked it or not ; so they did nothing. Then you became
educated in your own home States ; you made it clear to
them that they would have to give to the city of Washing-
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
ton the same decent government that you demanded in
your own cities. So when the movement began in Wash-
ington this last spring, the law was passed unanimously,
with only one dissenting vote. No one particular party
can claim particular praise for this movement ; they all
voted for the elimination of the segregated district be-
cause the policy had become popular in other cities in
the States from which they had come.
So the district was closed. We found there, and you
will find it everywhere, that the ramifications of this evil
branch out through the whole community. The mer-
chants were interested, because in addition to the ordinary
sales which they made at ordinary prices, they got ex-
orbitant prices from these girls. In many of the houses
there were automatic piano players that you or I would
have to pay $800 or $850 for that these women had paid
$1,250 for. I once sat in a rear drawing-room in one
of these places, and listened while a representative of one
of the leading musical firms — one of the most prominent
and reputable firms in the city — talked with the woman
who had been running the house about a pianola for
which she still owed $450. She wanted him to give her
a paper so that when she opened another house in an-
other city she would have credit for what she had paid in.
He refused to give her this paper, but he said, "Of course
we will do everything we can to help you when you move,
and I will advise you where to go." This, you under-
stand, was one of the largest musical firms in Washing-
ton, and I heard all this with my own ears. She said,
''Well, what would you advise?" 'T wouldn't go to Bal-
timore," he said, "1 think they will close up there soon,
and at Alexandria they have some one to watch people
trying to come in, and I wouldn't go to Richmond or At-
lanta. Savannah, Georgia, is the best place. They won't
60
Commercialhed Vice and Social Pro stress
^'
do anything to you there ; they have tried and failed. We
should be very glad to write to some real estate agent
there to get you a good house at a reasonable price."
Afterwards, I asked about the house where this con-
versation took place. I asked a young woman who had
been there three years what the rent was, and she said
that it was $75 a week. I rented that same house two
weeks afterwards, as a temporary shelter for the girls,
and I paid $60 a month for this same house that this
woman had been paying $75 a week for as a disreputable
house.
A few weeks later a woman who wanted to leave the
house she was in went to a judge, and a minister was in-
terested in her and came to see her and helped her. One
day there was a collection taken for some purpose, and
she sent him a check for $25. He was very much pleased
to receive it, and turned it over to the official committee,
and said, ''This is from one of the women who has been
bad and has been converted." And one of the men said,
"We ought not to take this money ; you know where it
was earned." So finally they voted not to take the money.
So the minister, in order to break it as gently as possible
to this woman, asked one of the good women of the parish
to go to her and explain that they couldn't take it because
she was too poor to afford so much ; that she might put
a dollar in the contribution box now and then to show her
sentiment. But when this plan was carried out, the woman
was too shrewd to be deceived, and she said, 'T know
what is the matter ; some one has objected to the money.
Is it Mr. Blank?'' And she named a very prominent
member of the church who was in the real estate business.
The visitor tried to evade the question, but it was no
use; the woman said: "I know it is Mr. Blank ; it is just
like him. I paid him rent for one of his houses for
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
twenty-two years, and I paid over fifty per cent of the
value, and he thought the money was good enough for
him. You take my check back to Mr. Blank and let him
carry it a day or two in his pocket and then it will be sanc-
tified enough to use in the collection."
That is the real condition that exists, not only in busi-
ness, but in the professions. Take medicine, the noble
profession of medicine ; how they have exploited these
girls, God only knows. It has debased the law ; the
lawyers taught the women how they might do things for-
bidden by the law without being caught.
When the law abolishing the district was passed in
Washington there was a really fine woman who had been
there a long time, and I coveted her for my work to get
in touch with some of the girls. I had known her for
years ; she had never broken a law. I pleaded with her
and finally she said she would let me know the next day ;
but I didn't hear from her, and I called her up and got
no answer until at five o'clock the messenger said that she
would see me the next morning at nine. When she came
and I talked to her, I found that she had spent the whole
preceding day at a lawyer's office in Washington, in com-
munication with three of the most reputable firms in the
city, who had been trying to persuade her to bring suit
and make a test case of this new injunction law, in order
to try to overturn the law and retard its enforcement.
'T wanted to do it," she told me; "the man I loved wanted
me to do it; but if this place had not been a segregated
district I should never have been here. I know hundreds
of girls would be safe if they had not been drawn in here.
I know that I can never use this house for anything else,
but I would rather do without the return on my property
than overset a law that will benefit every one." This was
from a disreputable woman.
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Commercialized Vice and Social Progress
There is a test being made in Washington now, but it
was not a woman who brought the suit, but the real estate
interests. It has been done by one of the oldest firms, the
one with which Mr. Willett is connected, who is now rep-
resenting us at the court of Spain. When a hotel, which
had been hitherto respectable, opened its doors to disrepu-
table women and law breakers, and it became the head-
quarters for that sort of thing, one of the newspapers
took the question up and an injunction was issued against
this hotel. In order that the property might not be tied
up, the Willett Real Estate Company made a test case of
it. It is a cause of congratulation to me that it was not
an unfortunate woman, but big business that tried to over-
turn this law. It has given me greater hope for humanity
and of my own sex, and the sense of responsibility to take
away the chains that bind, and take away the power to ex-
ploit them and use the weak and yielding. We must pro-
tect them, and destroy the power that drags these girls
down. Many of them are weak and subnormal, it is true,
but they can be used in some less expensive way, econom-
ically, socially, and morally.
I feel that there is room for hope, and am so glad to
know of this movement for social progress, for there is
need of a forum where these things will be discussed, not
in an emotional way, but by those who are just and in-
telligent, as well as warm-hearted, and I believe this or-
ganization represents that element.
63
Chapter VI.
SOCIAL INCORPORATION AND SOCIAL
PROGRESS.
BY JOHN HENRY WHYTE.
This is the history of a tiny effort to solve the world's
greatest industrial problem, and I believe it to be a prac-
tical and ideal solution for mankind's biggest problems.
The signs of the times indicate that incorporated farm-
ing, combining scientific knowledge and modern big busi-
ness management, will be an important industrial ten-
dency of this decade, and that it will pay bigger dividends
than railroads, banking, or insurance.
INTRODUCTORY.
There will be much jostling before the end of this de-
cade to secure a place in the forefront of the mightiest
industrial movement the world has ever seen, the rosy
dawn of which already lights the eastern sky of the
realms of progressive civilization.
Incorporated Farming is the term which now best de-
scribes the movement. Social Incorporation will be a bet-
ter term after the public becomes familiar with it, for
the movement will ultimately and inevitably, through the
natural processes of evolution, include all of man's indus-
trial and social activities.
The most perfect industrial or social organization, the
chief evolutionary product culminating from all the ages
of human ingenuity, is the corporation, and is represented
by the big, modern, incorporated industries, or the pres-
ent-day social corporations, the town, the county, the city,
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Social Incorporation and Social Progress
the State, or the Nation. Incorporation will ever tend in
a continuous course of evolution toward a still higher
perfection, to be adapted to human needs. The social cor-
poration as now organized has evolved from industrial
wants and exists because of industrial reasons. The
necessity of industry gave birth to this social or civic
corporation, the chief functions of which, from the town
on up through the State to the Nation, are now seen to
be the regulation of industrial corporations, and through
the process and methods of regulation, the industrial and
social threads are being woven into an inseparable tex-
ture.
The functional difference between an incorporated in-
dustry of importance, and a state, is year by year grow-
ing less and less. Finally there will be but one or the
other. The survival will be the social corporation, which
will include both the industrial and social activities ana
functions. The social corporation will be mankind's su-
preme, earthly achievement.
Some industrial corporations, within the knowledge of
the present generation, have at times achieved greater
influence in many directions than States, but eventually
the States or the Nation have rightfully assumed the gov-
erning hand, because industrial corporations receive their
charters from social corporations which are the people.
But the majority, as well as the minority of the people,
and the industries, will become the same through incor-
poration.
The corporation is the most substantial thing known.
Although composed of human individuals, it never dies.
The principles of power in the corporation, when used
as the forces for good, go farther than any other humanly
contrived means toward solving the world's greatest
problems.
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
The Social Corporation, beginning with the Incor-
porated Farm, will absorb the labor union as now consti-
tuted, and go farther than the proposals of Christian
socialism, for under its dominion the laborer will ulti-
mately receive all the profits of his toil. Single tax will
be a fundamental principle, because a tax on land, allow-
ing absolute freedom from tax restrictions for all indus-
trial activities, will be the only kind possible, when land
because of the food that comes from it, is the universally
recognized base of all industrial, therefore, of all social
organizations.
Scientific knowledge, now mostly utilized for purely re-
search purposes, in combination with modern big business
management and efficiency cost sheets, will have in the
conduct of the Incorporated Farm, the more practical
purpose of ennobling toil with the highest rank of dig-
nity, while increasing the profits and happiness of the
toilers.
An extended view into the future reveals the Incorpor-
ated Farm, in the course of evolution, taking on more
and more the functions of manufacturing.
In the final view, the individual farmer will transfer
his little farm to this big, modern, farm corporation, tak-
ing stock in payment for its value, for it is not land, only,
that man wants, but an opportunity for the greatest pos-
sible physical and mental developments, thus securing ma-
terial and spiritual happiness.
When such a combination had apparent economic value,
the various farm corporations would ultimately amalga-
mate.
FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES.
The Incorporated Farm, or corporation, w^ill have as
its fundamental base, the combination of all that is pow-
66
Social Incorporation and Social Progress
erful for good in modern corporate development applied
to the most necessary business of life, that of producing
food, with the advantages of the most practical, technical
school of the age.
The purpose of the Incorporated Farm is essential to
bring the most desirable living conditions to the land,
with profits equahng those of the established city business
pursuits, of the professional and trade pursuits, with less
toil and a greater amount of time for physical, mental,
and spiritual improvement. Its motto will be, "work to
Hve," and not "live to work.'' The grind of the present
industrial system will be diminished to reasonable pro-
portions. The "high cost of living" and the "forward to
the land" problems will be solved, and congested popula-
tion in big cities prevented. The maximum possibilities
for human happiness will be offered. Conditions for
higher human development will be offered.
The Incorporated Farm will not have for its purpose
the enrichment of any particular individual or family,
and thus will be eliminated the only evil of the modern
industrial corporation.
The land held by the Incorporated Farm will never be
divided. Stock will be issued for it. Incorporation is
the most successful co-operation known. This is an
axiom.
There will be no mortgages or bonds provided for the
Incorporated Farm, and therefore there will be no bank-
ruptcy. All lands will be paid for before farming oper-
ations begin, thus maintaining financial durability at the
highest known standard.
The Incorporated Farm will be financed alike by the
funds contributed by small investors seeking to get for-
ward to the land, and by the large investors wishing to
secure the safest and most attractive investments.
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
Academic truths and platitudes make it certain that
land is the most substantial and remunerative base of the
big, modern, industrial corporation.
The future of the American nation, of all nations, is to
be determined most largely by the development of agri-
cultural resources, a truth recognized by the leading
statesmen, directors of important industries, and leaders
of modern civilization.
The problem of the future food supply of this nation,
of any nation, is the biggest single problem with vvrhich
the people have to contend.
The United States Agricultural Department is the acme
of human achievement for the advancement of scientific
agriculture, its methods surpassing all others ever con-
trived.
The State agricultural colleges are now disseminating
information, which, when properly applied, greatly in-
creases the productivity of the soil and enables numerous
graduates to earn splendid salaries as agricultural ex-
perts.
These excellent institutions have not only increased the
yield of staple crops, but have introduced many new ones,
one of the best known and most profitable of which is
alfalfa.
Whatever the Department of Agriculture has done,
whatever the agricultural colleges have done, this biggest
and most modern industrial corporation could do better.
Industrial corporation development makes the truth of
this assertion self-evident.
TO ABSORB MANUFACTURING.
The Incorporated Farm would, through the processes
of successful growth, enter more and more largely into
manufacturing. Live stock, grain, fruit, and vegetables
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Social Incorporation and Social Progress
would find their way to market as finished food products.
Cotton cloth, not cotton bales, would be the product for
sale, and the same would be true of wool, flax, silk, and
other textiles.
The corporation will take over the functions of the
abbatoir, packing house, cannery, and mill. It will ab-
sorb the profits now going into the coffers of manufac-
turers. Manufacturing and farming will become one and
the same.
In all manufacturing operations that the Incorporated
Farm, through consistent, economic evolution will enter,
it will also excel, because its students will have the sur-
passing fitness of the best technical training, and the
further incentive that they are working at their own busi-
ness. Experienced factory hands will leave the factories
where they are now employed to work for the Incorpor-
ated Farm.
PROFITS.
As the corporation would follow all products to the
consumer through the marketing, and ultimately through
the manufacturing processes, there would be more profits
accruing than would be possible to any individual.
The general average crop yields the country over are
less than ten per cent of the maximum yields. Most of
this ninety per cent of deficiency can be overcome by
expert, scientific knowledge.
The signs of the times indicate that incorporated farm-
ing, which indeed has already begun, and will increase in
a geometrical ratio year after year with its combination
of modern, big business management and scientific knowl-
edge, will pay larger dividends than railroads, banking,
insurance, or manufacturing as conducted under the in-
dustrial system it is displacing. The Incorporated Farm at
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
Inglesicle, Phoenix, Arizona, has been in operation since
March 5, 1914, and those interested are cordially invited
to come and see for themselves, or if they cannot come,
write for literature. Its stockholders are made up of St.
Louis, Chicago, and New York newspaper men and their
friends. The business managers of two large, metropol-
itan newspapers, and the managing editor of another, are
on the Board of Directors, as is the grandson of the
founder of one of the oldest and best known metropol-
itan dailies in the Central States.
Many well-informed people profess to believe that even
the inexperienced clerk nowadays can make more than
twenty-five per cent profit on his capital and labor in-
vested in intensive farming, counting his labor at pro-
fessional prices.
Others add weight and influence to this statement who
do not actually believe it, but because of the high cost
of living, selfishly wish to encourage as many people as
possible to go forward to the land, and thus indirectly
secure better conditions for themselves away from the
land. But this false encouragement will not influence
many people. The ultimate hope of profits, of more sat-
isfactory living conditions, of the prospects of greater
happiness, are the main influences propelling to this as to
other lines of human endeavor. No one undertakes to
accomplish a task without expecting to be rewarded in
some manner satisfactory to himself through the laws of
compensation.
But when all selfish reasons for encouraging people to
go to the land are brushed aside, it may still be said that
scarcely any one doubts that there are many authenti-
cated examples of farm profits of one hundred per cent
or more, produced by the scientific farming of grains,
fruits, and vegetables, or in the raising of live stock,
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Social Incorporation and Social Progress
accounts of which we may constantly read in the mag-
azines, newspapers, and special treatises.
When profits and other conditions are promising
enough, there will be a genuine movement forward to the
land, and not before. Men do not join in a movement out
of mere fancy, a refined patriotism that might lead to
many hard knocks, with the majority singularly indif-
ferent to their misfortunes.
There is not a single business of which it is not truly
said that it is overrun, but while the individual farmer
must under the existing industrial system take his chances
in competition as other business men do, he will gladly
join his strength to that of his neighbor in the incorpor-
ated farm when he is convinced of the advantage to be
derived.
No man can successfully deny the practical facilities
of the modern industrial corporation for producing prof-
its, when it has plenty of money, an abundance of integ-
rity, and is advised by the leading scientists, experts, and
the best modern big business managers.
Applied to farming, to the resultant manufacturing
operations, and to the marketing of the products, these
facilities will produce the greatest possible profits, just
as when they have been applied to any modern industry,
the greatest of which have already proven their merits
and advantages.
The corporation will soon become popularized through
the ownership of its securities by a large number of peo-
ple with small means, because their profits will be greater
than those offered by savings banks, and safer.
A TECHNICAL SCHOOL.
The corporation will continuously operate a modern,
practical, technical school, the term ''school" being in-
clusive of every branch of learning.
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
To the students, the terms "corporation" and "ahna
mater" will be synonymous.
The operatives of the corporation will always be called
students, whether young or old, male or female, and not
"laborers," signifying that they are constantly striving to
learn.
In no sense will the corporation interfere with the
American public schools, for they are the most perfect
the world has ever seen, and will constantly become more
practical and suitable to human needs. The corporation
will provide technical training, not at this time found in
the public schools, until the educational needs of its stu-
dents are fully satisfied by the public school curriculums.
The corporation curriculum will provide for the fullest
development of both mind and body, but technical train-
ing will come first, as man must first be able to sustain
life and provide its necessities, that there may be possi-
bilities for physical, mental, and spiritual development.
Domestic service, training for home keepers, successful
wives and husbands, will be given careful attention. Prac-
tical questions of health and hygiene, and sex relations,
will be studied. The subjects of good government and
good citizenship will be investigated and taught as a sci-
ence.
Equal honor and dignity will be provided for the work
of the hand and of the head. By successfully combining
technical training and practical business, scientific ex-
perts superior to anv will be produced, because they will
at all times be in touch with the business side of agri-
culture, that of making the greatest amount of profits
compatible with physical, mental, and spiritual prosperity.
Students, boys, girls, men, or women, may enter the
corporation school without cost for tuition, if they have
the mental and physical capacity, and graduate into higher
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Social Incorporation and Social Progress
ideals of living and greater possibilities of attainment
than ever previously conceived by them. But students
who have no money will invest a portion of their earn-
ings in the stock of the corporation until they have ac-
quired sufficient to insure that they will not become a
burden on charity along with mental and physical de-
ficients. Finding it possible and desirable to pay their
tuition by exhilarating labor of their own hands, students
will graduate directlv into remunerative, life-long service
of their alma mater, doing the things for which they are
best fitted, and for which they have the greatest natural
or acquired inclination and aptitude.
As the students advance in efficiency through the merit
system, they will receive more and more wages up to a
standard maximum.
The schoolhouses will also be libraries and halls for
community-meeting purposes, where lectures will be
heard, sermons preached, orations delivered, and moving
pictures, the greatest of modern teachers, exhibited and
observed. They will become the community social cen-
ters where there will be provided wholesome diversions
and amusements, including music and dancing.
A SQUARE EDUCATIONAL DEAL.
In arguing for vocational training recently. Professor
Bolton, of the University of Washington, made the point
that our present school system culminating in the high
school, does not give the public a square deal. While it
provides for the needs of the minority that look forward
to culture and professional careers, it is also imperative
to provide for the majority of the children who will be the
future wage-earners and tillers of the soil. In this re-
spect the public-school system is emphatically unfair and
undemocratic. Justice and business efficiency alike de-
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
mand a systematic plan for industrial education. This
kind of a square deal would prove a profitable, national
investment.
HOME PROVISIONS. ,
The corporation will always provide students and stock-
holders a place where they may build a home. They can
build at any time and know that the home will be open
for them as long as they Hve, for it would always re-
main without financial encumbrance under the protection
of the corporation.
Part of the money necessary for building a home will
be furnished by the corporation. The students will live
in their own homes where they may rear their children in
God's blessed sunshine and fresh air, most efficient med-
icines and vitalizers. Those who prefer may live at cost
at the corporation's clubs, lodges, and hotels.
All buildings on the corporation land will be con-
structed at cost under the direction of a competent archi-
tect, who will see that they are not only beautiful, but
provided with every modern accessory for sanitation, hy-
giene, and comfort. It is now possible to cool houses in
the summer and warm them in the winter by the same
electrical energy. Ice is manufactured and cooking done
in many modern homes by the same electrical current.
Mechanical devices for these processes are on the mar-
ket. No farming corporation is modern that does not
provide electricity. We have it. The use of electricity
in modern industrial and domestic operations is becoming
more and more universal.
IDEALISM.
The noticeable element of weakness in the modern la-
bor union will be avoided, as students capable of earning
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Social Incorporation and Social Progress
the most money will receive the most, as they graduate
upwards into higher earning capacities through the merit
system.
The dream of Christian socialism will be more fully
realized in that the students will ultimately receive all the
profits of their labor. While there will at first be stock-
holders who are not students, when they offer stock for
sale, they would first tender it to the corporation, which
would allot it to the students in order of application, so
that the students will eventually become the owners of
all the stock and receive all the profits. This regulation
will insure that all of the stockholders will eventually be-
come students.
No students will ultimately be allowed to work longer
than eight hours per day, which is sufficient gain-produc-
ing toil for the individual. The remaining eight hours
for physical, mental, and spiritual betterment will be em-
ployed in study and recreation, development of body and
mind. The eight hours for sleep will be under conditions
where the mind and body are the least tired and worn,
for air and sunshine and plentiful and wholesome food
best maintain health.
As the corporation grows into large proportions, the
problems of drought and irrigation will disappear. The
sufficient water of the great rivers will be utilized to over-
come these defects. But the practical, incorporated farm
can be most effectually begun where present-day irriga-
tion methods are the most perfect.
Ample opportunity will be afforded for the active em-
ployment of every faculty possessed by the students.
Their services will bring the largest remuneration ob-
tainable from the corporation. But remuneration will
have a secondary importance when the students receive all
the profits of their toil. Under the perfected social cor-
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
poration, the details of profits will be regulated by the
physical and mental needs of individuals, expressed in
statutes.
The corporation, operating lands in different parts of
the country, will make it possible for individual fam-
ilies to enjoy a change of climate while carrying on their
vocations.
The students will work out the most important prob-
lems of science, engineering, architecture, of the whole
scope of human endeavor and invention. These problems
will still be more attractive because they will be as re-
munerative as interesting, for the corporation will be able
to turn them to immediate and practical account, having
the most practical place for their immediate utility.
Awards of money will be given those originating or in-
venting new and useful things. Thus satisfying employ-
ment to all students will be furnished during the entire
portion of lifetime allotted to toil for gain.
Students will be retired at a fixed age, or as soon as
they have acquired sufficient stock of the corporation to
afiford them an independent income, the amount of which
will be standardized, minimizing if not entirely doing
away with pensions and insurance for employees, as
such.
A limit will be placed on the amount of stock students
may acquire. After retiring, students may devote all
their time to study and travel, to completer mental and
physical development. The highest possible honors will
be conferred upon retired students who accomplish the
greatest service for their fellows.
Further regulations for the conduct of the aflfairs of
the corporation will safely evolve out of the trained minds
and united wisdom of the students.
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Social Incorporation and Social Progress
TRANSPORTATION.
Trolley lines and steam railroads will be built when
necessary to complete present transportation arrange-
ments. These will eventually become part of the com-
mon carrier system and pass under government regula-
tion, then ultimate government ownership.
In some localities rivers will make it possible to utilize
water craft. A far enough extended view into the fu-
ture exhibits the Incorporated Farm as the social cor-
poration with the means of transportation as mere ad-
juncts, when all civic and industrial needs will be ex-
pressed in statutes.
The prosperity of the agricultural district, the value of
its farm lands, depends very largely upon the quality of
the public roads. As the Incorporated Farm makes the
interests of the community identical, develops and per-
fects the science of road building, assisted by the Federal
Good Roads Bureau at Washington, the isolation of
country life mil vanish in the wake of transportation
facilities necessary to carry on the business of the big-
gest, modern corporation. The students of the Incorpor-
ated Farm will ride in automobiles when they wish, for
whatever there is that is good, is none too good for them.
The making of good roads will soon cause the United
States to be envied by all other nations. More good roads
will be made in this country within the next five years, in
all Hkelihood, than have ever yet been made. Since
March, 1913, the Lincoln Highvv^ay, from New York to
San Francisco, all the way across this continent, has
been so nearly perfected that more than twenty-five thou-
sand automobiles will come to San Francisco this year to
attend the exposition. The Lincoln Highway is destined
to be the trunk of the most gigantic system of good roads,
connecting up with every large and enterprising city of
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
every State, in such a way that a family can travel from
one corner of this great union of States to any other with
the same comfort and convenience as in any up-to-date
city.
MINIMUM OPPOSITION.
There will be a minimum of opposition to the growth
of the Incorporated Farm movement, for its beginnings
are the same as those of other corporations. But there
is an opposition by even good and great people to every
movement having for its purpose the advancement of
civilization, because those in high places are always sat-
isfied with present conditions which render them tribute.
Prejudice and selfish interests from this source are al-
lowed to obscure the horizon of truth.
Martyrs were burned for enunciating principles which
have become the laws of every-day life. Harvey was
ridiculed and punished for declaring that blood circn-
lated,through the human body. Daniel Webster opposed
steam railroads and thought them an absurdity. When
Cyrus W. Field was financing the building of the trans-
Atlantic cable, an influential journal said that he had gone
to England to further the interests of his favorite enter-
prise. "Both ends of the cable will be under the control
of England and no American is a real friend of his coun-
try who will give a cent to help England acquire such a
military engine." And there are many who do not now
believe in the possible perfection of the airship and the
aeroplane.
HEALTH AND VIGOR.
The Incorporated Farm will do more to develop health
and vigor than all other means ever conceived. It will
afford the highest privilege of becoming real citizens in
a community where each man and woman can do a part,
7d>
Social Incorporation and Social Progress
for the glory of the service will be a stimulant never be-
fore felt.
*'The progressive civilization of the last hundred years
has worked terribly against the health and perpetuity of
the whole race," said Charles William Eliot, President
Emeritus of Harvard University, before the International
Congress of School Hygiene in Buffalo, August, 1913.
"This is seen in the reduced vitality of the multitude
that inhabit closely built cities, in the diminished size of
families, in the incapacity of many women to bear and
nurse children, in the disproportionate increase of the in-
sane, defectives, and criminally inclined. Such cities as
London, Paris, Berlin, New York, and Chicago bear wit-
ness that modern civilization is all the time operating and
promoting its own destruction."
PRESENT-DAY ORGANIZATION.
There never have been so many movements organized
to help the farmer as at present, yet the cost of food
products goes higher and higher. The mere co-operative
organization of farmers has not proven as practical as
the farmers themselves would like. The Southern Truck
Growers' Association of Texas, the largest ever organ-
ized, is going into dissolution because it does not get the
support necessary for its success from the farmers them-
selves, which is the history of nearly all farmers' co-oper-
ative movements, especially when it comes to marketing.
MARKETING PROBLEM.
The methods of the Incorporated Farm would success-
fully solve the marketing problem, for it would in the
final analysis get all the profits from the products it put
on the market.
The recent appropriation of $50,000 by the Federal
Government to investigate marketing plans for farmers,
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
followed by an appropriation of $15,000 by the State of
Texas, shows there is a keen realization of one of the
causes of the high cost of living, as well as a desire to help
farmers with their greatest problem. Other States are
giving consideration to marketing problems, but Texas
is the first to make an appropriation, and has passed a
law making cotton warehouse certificates negotiable.
The farmer can produce without organization, but he
cannot successfully market. Organization is necessary to
deal with marketing problems. It has been suggested
that the Federal Government utilize the machinery of the
National Farmers' Union, claimed by some to be the most
powerful organization in the Western Hemisphere, in
the carrying out of any marketing plans. This union, in
national convention at Salina, Kansas, in September,
1913, advocated a central, national marketing bureau to
bring the farmer and business interests closer together
for their mutual benefit.
The farmer cannot be helped until he organizes, and
the Federal Government cannot help the farmer excepting
through organization. But from the very nature of or-
ganization more loosely constructed, there cannot be full
and complete co-operation without incorporation.
This truth is being realized now that the mania for
organization is causing a confusion of effort and a wast-
ing of energy. The stockholders of a modern industrial
corporation are not afflicted with these ills.
The modern industrial corporation is the only organ-
ization that ever successfully solved the marketing prob-
lem. The Federal statutes show with what success some
of the big industrial corporations have marketed their
own products. These statutes, indeed, prove that some of
these corporations, after they have grown to the stature
of trusts, successfully raised the price of their commod-
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Social Incorporation and Social Progress
ities beyond the endurance of the people, who make the
laws, but such laws are always the sufficient guarantees
of the people's liberty. No corporation will ever get so
big that the people will not be big enough to govern it.
And, finally, the people and the social corporation, which
will include all industry, will become one and the same.
MERE CO-OPERATION TOO LIMTTED.
A lesson learned from co-operation among farmers is
that it should be nation-large before it can be perfected,
so that the farmer may secure for his sales what the con-
sumer ultimately pays. It would be impossible to de-
velop and maintain such extensive co-operation outside of
a highly-developed corporation.
In the West, farmers and fruit-growers mostly deal
with uniform products, like wheat, apples, oranges, grape-
fruit, potatoes, and hay. Big buyers do not care to con-
sider small offerings, thus giving western farmers and
fruit-growers distinctive advantages.
Even when farmers are co-operating for marketing
purposes, the representatives of the co-operative union
work at a disadvantage, because each individual is pitted
against a dozen specialists. Marketing farm produce now
is just where marketing manufactures were twenty years
ago, when sixty per cent of the final price went to mar-
keting expenses and wasteful competition. The present
manner of purchasing supplies for the farm is alike waste-
ful and antiquated.
middleman's profits.
The problem of reasonably marketing farm products, is
one that society will solve within the next twenty years to
lessen the cost of living. For instance, one of the potato
unions near New York City, in 1913, averaged forty-four
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
cents a bushel in the seUing price. Consumers in New
York City paid eighty cents to one dollar. Here is a
chance to reduce the cost of living, and at the same time
to add to the profits of the farmer.
The canning industry is progressing by rapid strides.
A single machine can now turn out as many as ninety
thousand cans in a day. We now think of canned prod-
ucts in millions. The farmer must look to this ever in-
creasing market. The Incorporated Farm derives all the
profits from canning its own products.
HIGH COST OF LIVING.
The management of successful industrial corporations
is much more efiicient than that of civic corporations.
Civic waste is responsible for much of the high cost of
living. As cities grow, the cost of government propor-
tionate with the population has increased. With the same
economy and efficiency noted in the management of suc-
cessful industrial corporations, it would decrease. This
principle has permitted the formation of the very largest
of all industrial corporations.
In the United States, a peace-loving country, about
seventy-one cents out of every dollar of tax for Federal
Government expense, is used to support the army and
navy. The proportion of tax used for miHtary purposes
by European governments, before the outbreak of the
present great, international conflagration, was even
greater, with Germany at the top of the list. Many peo-
ple were fleeing from Germany before the present war
broke out. All of Europe is now staggering near the
brink of bankruptcy. But industrial necessities will event-
ually put an end to all wars.
"The primary factor in the rise of the cost of living
is the fall in the purchasing power of gold, due to the
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Social Incorporation and Social Progress
excessive and growing exactions of government," says
Dr. David Starr Jordan. "A nation is a huge corporation
which differs from other corporations in its power to levy
assessments without Hmit on its stockholders. With the
financial management of even the most progressive na-
tions, no industrial corporation could escape insolvency.
The rise in the cost of articles of necessity has been about
fifty per cent since 1897, municipal and State debts are
from two to three times as great, and the increase in the
world's supply of gold has been from seven and one-half
to eleven billion dollars, somewhat lowering its buying
power, but the amount of gold is small compared with the
amount of credit resting upon it, and population also in-
creases. The total State and local taxes in the United
States increased from one to two and one-half billion dol-
lars during the decade from 1901 to 1911. Instead of
living beyond our means, we are living beyond the means
of the fourth generation. There is certainly dangerous
portent in a prosperity that rests on taxing the future.
Taxation lowers the purchasing power of money. Bonds
will be paid at their maturity in still cheaper dollars.
Hence the fall in value the world over of gild-edged
bonds. The stress and incidence of taxation falls upon
the least resistant element. As production is more or less
limited, the consumer is the weakest of the three groups,
producer, dealer, and consumer, and finally bears most of
the tax burden, but in any case an increase in taxation is
a burden on the people, and they can only shift it among
themselves.
FARMING POPULATION DECREASES.
The rural population of the United States has increased
only nine millions in twenty years, while the total popula-
tion has increased twenty-nine millions. But the rural
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
population of England and Wales has been declining, not
only relatively, but actually, in every decade of the past
half-century. In 1851, in those countries, nearly one-
half of the males above ten years of age were upon the
farms; in 1910, there was less than one-tenth. With a
great increase in total population, the number of persons
engaged in agriculture has decreased in a half-century by
more than five hundred thousand, or thirty per cent.
INCLUSIVE.
Those whose limits of vision coincide with mine, see
for the workers in the Incorporated Farm movement, a
lifetime of interesting and remunerative toil, real service
to fellow-men, doubly interesting because of the good it
will do in putting the production of the world's food
supply on the highest professional and business plane,
adding to the profits of laborers, and increasing the vigor,
the health, and the happiness of the human family.
There is too much tendency to look upon country life
as needing the amelioration that comes from charitable
motives. The small farmer, the poor farmer, and their
over-worked wives and children, do not wish pity. The
independent American farmer scorns to be patronized.
Through the processes of the Incorporated Farm, with its
technical training school, he will presently hold an envi-
able position, coming into possession of what is right-
fully his. The soil will give him the same superfine cul-
ture that he gives the soil.
The "sittlichkeit" of the present assures the most rapid
growth for the Incorporated Farm, using the German
expression introduced into the English language by Lord
Haldane.
The Incorporated Farm has a meaning and practical
value outside of the realms of magniloquent rhetoric. It
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Social Incorporation and Social Progress
proposes specific propositions affecting the intimate con-
cern of immediate industrial and social life.
Forward to the land is a worthy and necessary move-
ment, but the day of the small farm is passed, for the
small farm is not economical. Machinery costs too much
and the marketing processes are too expensive and dif-
ficult.
The small merchant, then the large one, will cast his lot
with the students of the Incorporated Farm. The im-
portant and necessary business now carried on by the
small merchant, will continue just as important and neces-
sary, and more dignified, as a part of the great co-oper-
ative whole, when the Incorporated Farm assumes its
functions. The Incorporated Farm management will dis-
play the same modern tactics in buying in wholesale bulk,
as displayed by the purchasing agent of other large in-
dustrial or civic corporations.
But the middle man and manufacturer are under pres-
ent conditions as much producers as the farmers them-
selves, for a thing is not produced until it is delivered to
the individual who wants it, at the time he wants it, in
the condition he wants it, for the purpose he wants it.
The interests of the merchant, the manufacturer, and the
farmer in the Social Corporation will become identical.
''Business in its evolution has passed through three
stages," says Professor William Hammond Parker, of
the University of Cincinnati, ''appropriation, exploitation,
and production. The stage of appropriation grew out of
the power, physical strength, of the strong cave man, over
the weak cave man, and extended down into the feudal
ages, when the feudal lord not only owned the land, but
his vassals as well. Slavery was in this stage, and it was
an improvement over cannibalism that immediately pre-
ceded it. With the invention of printing and the bringing
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
of gunpowder from the Far East, the former making
possible the dissemination of knowledge previously locked
up with the monks in the cloisters, and the latter reducing
the physical power of the mail-coated knight to an equal-
ity with that of the soft-handed merchant, appropriation
gave way to exploitation, and craftiness was substituted
for the brute force of the mailed hand. That exploitation
of labor, of natural resources, or of the public, is rapidly
passing away, is shown by the statutes governing rail-
roads, banking, insurance, and corporations generally,
protecting the natural resources of the States and Nation,
the forests, the water power of the rivers, the mines, and
public franchises. In this age of production, the ethical
idea is becoming more and more dominant, so that the
very principles of eternal right and wrong, which govern
a man in his home and in his church, also govern him in
his politics and in his business activities. Political and
civil affairs will become more and more largely industrial.
We are now interested, not alone in the questions of the
rights of labor, but are getting interested in the questions
of the rights of the man who employs labor. No man
can again convince an American audience that his busi-
ness may be conducted as he pleases because it is his own,
or that any question can be purely a business or purely a
political question, for it must be looked at, not only as
an economical or a political question, but as an ethical
question as well. Ethical ideas and standards change,
else there would be no progress. What was right for my
grandfather is not right for me. Truth alone is immu-
table, and the precept of the Man of Galilee, 'Do unto oth-
ers as you would have others do unto you,' is the perfect
guide for all human actions. We are coming to realize
that no man or body of men has a right to demand of their
employer that which they are not willing to give to their
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Social Incorporation and Social Progress
employer; to demand honesty from him and not give in
return absokite honesty."
The day laborer will become the stockholder in the In-
corporated Farm, acquiring with an independence and
competence, the education that will enable him to become
a more dignified, better balanced, and useful citizen. It
is not labor that detracts from dignity and social worth,
but ignorance.
The salaried man who uses his head will learn the value
of the work of his hands and be blessed in that he may
provide a home for his family and leave an inheritance.
Industrially, the greater the freedom of the individual,
the more wages he earns. The man born with a birth-
right in the Incorporated Farm, will be freed from the
terror of that biting poverty which paralyzes so many of
the individual man's activities. Nothing approaching so-
cial perfection can be reached while little children and
widowed mothers are ground into money by the mills of
the money gods. The beauties of poverty are only appar-
ent when voluntarily assumed by the matured philosopher
for purely asthetic reasons.
That the great man in any community is the man who
renders the greatest service, will be realized as a practical
truth, and such a man will ever live longest in the memory
of the generation which follows.
There is evolution everywhere. ''Let Thy thought be
my thought, let Thy purpose be my purpose," may be the
loftiest expression of prayer addressed to Deity, when it
is understood that God is Supreme Good, and may be
the prayer of the Jew and the Gentile, the Oriental and
the Occidental.
The Incorporated Farm as the social corporation, to
use the words of the immortal Gladstone, 'Svill help to
inspire humanity with the belief that life is a great and
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
noble calling — not a mean, groveling thing that we are
to shuffle through as we can — but an elevated and lofty
destiny."
This may seem an effervescent enthusiasm, but Emer-
son said, nothing worth while has ever been accomplished
without enthusiasm. ^'America is another name for op-
portunity. Our whole history appears like a last effort of
the Divine Providence in behalf of the human race,"
"He who seeks happiness never finds it," a philosopher
said, ''but he who does his duty, finds peace and happiness
in service." Paraphrasing Nelson at Trafalgar, in this
republic, every man is expected to do his duty.
'The instant you are content with progress," Herbert
Kaufman says, ''you will cease to progress." "When you
rest on your laurels, you have chosen a poor couch. What
you were yesterday doesn't interest us to-day. We want
to know what you will do to-morrow."
"It is the final conflict.
Let each stand in his place ;
The Brotherhood of Man
Shall be the human race."
WHAT OTHERS SAY.
Champ Clark, Speaker of the United States House of
Representatives : "The movement seems to me to be one
in the right direction."
J. C. Corbett, Assistant Chief of Bureau of Plant In-
dustry, United States Department of Agriculture : "I am
impressed with the scope of the scheme. It is almost
Utopian in its conception and application. It would un-
doubtedly, if it could be carried out, solve most of the
problems which it proposes to settle, but with varying in-
terest and abilities of the parties concerned, I am unable
to conceive of how such an ideal adjustment can be
Social Incorporation and Social Progress
brought about. The desires, ambitions, and abilities of in-
dividuals vary so greatly, there is such a wide diversity
of financial responsibilities already possessed by those
who might participate in such an undertaking that I can
conceive of no basis of equitable distribution of their
holdings or an equitable distribution of the returns from
the combined enterprise. In communities where the abil-
ities, ambitions, and financial responsibilities are more
nearly upon a parity than they are in most American com-
munities, it would be, in my judgment, easier to form
such a combination and indeed this is, to a certain extent,
proven by the corporative enterprises involving a wide di-
versity of activities in several European nations."
Fiske Warren, of Harvard University Faculty : 'T am
miuch in sympathy with many of your objects, and it
would be stimulating indeed to see such a plan as yours
succeed. At the same time permit me to express a doubt
as to whether you are not trying to include too many
things under the control of a single corporation. For
instance, to my mind, it is hardly conceivable that hap-
piness will result when a man's house shall be built, not
by himself, but by a corporation in which he himself and
all others living on the land shall be stockholders. This
criticism applies also to a number of other things which
the corporation is intended to undertake, but which to
my mind are better undertaken by private agencies or by
co-operative effort. However, until I see some plan laid
down to give form and substance to your interesting ad-
umbrations, I perhaps ought not to go far with criticisms,
either favorable or unfavorable, for I apprehend that if
there is anything in the criticisms I might make, they
would be apt to be found to be difficulties which you your-
self would encounter in bringing down the plan to prac-
ticality."
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
Honorable Charles Nagel, Former Secretary of Labor :
''It is entirely possible that your suggestions may solve
part of the problems. If your proposition involves the
active participation in work by those who are interested
in shares, the advantage would be a double one, because
it would not only take an active force back to the soil,
but your plan would be calculated to create an opportunity
for community life, the lack of which probably constitutes
one of the greatest deprivations of modern farming."
Mr. Robert John, Secretary of the Luther Burbank
Society : ''Your plan outlined for a great industrial center
of which intensive agriculture is the backbone, is, in my
mind, quite idealistic. None the less, it is a first step to-
ward an accomplishment which will do more for this
country than anything that has been offered — and with
which I am familiar — for the betterment of the condition
of the working classes."
Honorable Arthur Capper, Governor of Kansas, and
Editor of the Capper Publications : "It is almost too large
a proposition about which to make up one's mind at once.
But I am ready to say that it presents a nobly idealistic
plan, and a plan that ought to be practical."
Honorable Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the United
States Navy : "I am deeply concerned over the depopu-
lation of rural districts, and am an ardent advocate of the
'back-to-the-farm' movement. None are more competent
to further this vital cause than members of the press."
Dr. Elmer Gates, Scientist, Washington, D. C. : "It
seems to me to be a step in the right direction, and that
something of the kind will be one of the ground-floor
planks in the reconstructed edifice of human society. I
have long been thinking and experimenting along the lines
the results of which should not be neglected by those,
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Social Incorporation and Social Progress
who like yourself, are leaders of tendencies destined to
culminate in epoch-making results."
Dr. Frederik Van Eeden, Walden, Bussum, N. Holland,
Author of ''Happy Humanity," and other books: "I be-
lieve in your movement and anything I can do to help it,
I will more than gladly do. Mr. Hugh Mac Rae will be
in sympathy with your work. Do you know the pamphlet,
'Constructive SociaHsm,' by Mr. Millar? He would help
you. I think you should come into contact with Mr. Up-
ton Sinclair. He is a great friend of mine and I think
he will be glad to enter into a discussion of your scheme."
W. J. Hoggson, New York City, Industrial Leader :
"The matter is extremely interesting to me and I will do
everything in my power to push along the great work
which this country needs — some plan to apply business
methods to farming. If you have not in your club library
a book entitled 'Happy Humanity,' written by Dr. Fred-
erik Van Eeden, to which is appended a plan which I
worked out with Doctor Van Eeden for an incorporated
farm community, I should be glad to send you a copy."
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Chapter VII.
THE FAMILY AND SOCIAL PROGRESS.
BY WILLIAM FORD NICHOLS.
In boxing the compass, the four cardinal points are
combined for all of the bearings of the whole circle. We
have not only north, south, east, and west, but the old
mariner, in boxing the compass, includes north by east,
north northeast, and so on. So that the four points them-
selves furnish the whole round of the compass. The com-
mittee which has arranged these twenty-one different
talks, have followed President Lincoln's advice in block-
ing out the subjects under the one head of social prog-
ress ; and when I approach the particular topic assigned
to me, 'The Family and Social Progress," the realization
that this subject has already been so thoroughly covered,
both simplifies and supplements what I am able to say
on that subject.
It simplifies it because there are a good many technical
students who have written books. I, of course, have to
speak in an untechnical way without any system of anal-
ysis or synthesis, and only just as a family man, a family
man who owes all that he is pretty much to a good father
and mother, and who, therefore, has a tradition of what
family life did for him ; and as a family man who is the
least member of a household, the mother of which has
shaped that family so that the happiest thing on this earth
for him is the family life around his own hearthstone.
And these are the only qualifications that I have to speak
upon the family ; from the memories of dear ones gone,
who have left me the most precious memories in life,
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The Family and Social Progress
and the experience to-day of family life. I may say that
the old aspiration was that a family should have a quiver
full. The student will tell you that the old quiver held
five arrows, and therefore, as the father of five children,
and the grandfather of ten grandchildren, five boys and
five girls, you must grant that I have the quiver full, and
that is my only qualification to treat upon this matter.
One of the most careful students of the family was
the late Dr. Samuel Dyke, of New England, whom I used
to know a good many years ago. So far as family perils
are concerned, he was possibly, at the time of his death,
the best informed man in New England, and in a resume
of his work, he once said, "You can no more study social
science without studying the family, than you can study
biological science without studying the cell." The family
is the first society ; the family is the smallest social unit ;
the family is the cell for all that area of social expression,
I take it, which comes under the survey of the distin-
guished speakers in this congress. You can see what a
support it is to feel that somebody else has covered nearly
all the points, and that I can browse around and ramble
around freely, feeling that if I leave anything unsaid, it
has already been better said by somebody else. But I
feel that my topic is the biggest topic in the whole twenty-
one, because it concerns that which is the basis, the unit,
of all society.
Now, at the beginning I spoke of the four cardinal
points of the compass. There are also four cardinal
points in the family. The first is marriage, the next is
parenthood, the next is childhood, and the fourth is
brother- and sisterhood. Those are the four cardinal
points of the family, and like the four cardinal points of
the compass, we can use them in boxing the whole com-
pass of society, studied as a science. You have to have
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
these four points, unless I am very much mistaken, as the
basis of any true social vision, and those are the various
angles of the social science, of the socius. The family
gives us the four dimensions of companionship. The
first dimension of marriage and loyalty; the second di-
mension of parenthood and duty; the third in privilege,
and the fourth in fellowship. Each one of these four car-
dinal points of the family emphasizes one of these four
necessary things to any social progress. Marriage em-
phasizes loyalty ; parenthood emphasizes duty ; childhood,
privilege, and brother- and sisterhood, fellowship. Of
course these four dimensions are all in the totality of
the subject, and while I say they emphasize these points,
each one partakes of the ideal of all the rest. The empha-
sis does not exclude, but includes the others.
Now, let us take loyalty. Those of you who have fol-
lowed Professor Royce's book on the problem of Christi-
anity, will remember in what an up-to-date manner he
deals with what he calls loyalty to the universal loyalty ;
and he defines loyalty as a practically devoted love of the
community. Now, isn't that, in philosophic terms, just
the definition of good old mothering and fathering, a
practical, every-day, not argued, but acted life in com-
munity? Of course, I am taking Professor Royce's idea
out of the text, because he is dealing with Christianity as
a universal loyalty ; but I want to adopt his phrase, which
is ''the beloved community," and the happy husband and
wife forms the most beloved community on earth. There
is the loyalty of wife to husband, and of husband to wife,
and that is the ideal that must permeate a true, funda-
mental notion of social progress.
How completely that is brought out in our poetry, in all
our high ideals of what happiness in life is. We remem-
ber Hawthorne's fire worshipers in his econium of the
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The Family and Social Progress
^'
fireplace. He says we can understand the old-fashioned
tocsin, "Fight for your altars and your fires" ; but who un-
der heaven could ever start up any war cry for the sake of
our registers and stoves?
Think of Whittier's "Snowbound" ; how he depicts the
clean hearth and the crackle of the blaze, shut in by the
storm, and the dear home faces lighted by the fitful glow.
Isn't the loyalty to the beloved community of the family
the secret of it all?
So, if we expand the idea of the loyalty of two, to the
community; the loyalty of the hearthstone and the fam-
ily, and carry it out to the widest extent of human associ-
ation, isn't loyalty a fundamental contribution of the fam-
ily to the whole question?
Parenthood is the next cardinal point, and that involves
duty. As we remember our fathers and mothers, it
seemed to be taken for granted that they would do their
duty. The Bible says, "Fathers, provoke not your chil-
dren to wrath." You don't need to admonish mothers ;
they are more apt to have to keep the children from pro-
voking the fathers to wrath. But the admonition of the
Bible represents a duty. Much illustration is not neces-
sary, but here is one example. Oftentimes the father is
the first one to realize that when there is a new child,
there is also a new will. I have a picture of one of my
children, standing on the steps, that somebody caught just
as I had told the little child to do something, and she saia,
"I won't" ; and I have that picture of her little back aii
full of "1 won't." That is one of the discoveries that a
father makes about his child. It is a revelation to him of
one of the profoundest duties that God has laid upon him
as a parent; to deal with that Httle will. It won't take
care of itself, it is the father's responsibihty. Of course
he cannot suppress that will, it is his duty to develop it,
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
and that is illustrative of a great many of the duties of
parenthood. It stands for responsibility.
The third cardinal point is childhood. Just as parent-
hood emphasizes responsibility, childhood emphasizes
privilege. God knows there is also privilege in parent-
hood and the child has plenty of duties ; but in the family
the child stands for privilege. The child is a privileged
being, brought up in a true nurture and admonition, and
woe betide the parent who does not recognize the priv-
ilege of the child to be dealt with in the fairest possible
way. One of my old friends was once visiting a clerg}^--
man. The clergyman and his wife were going some-
where, and their child, sitting on my friend's knee, said,
"There go the two biggest liars in this town.'" Startled,
my friend asked, ''What do you mean?'' The child
said, ''Oh, they have told me for the last two years that
the next time they took a buggy ride they would take me,
and they have never done it yet." It is one of the priv-
ileges of the child to be truthfully dealt with. And in
society at large, every element must have its proper priv-
ileges, its right to opportunity, recognized.
The fourth cardinal point is fellowship ; the brother
and the sister. It means reciprocity, mutual forbearance,
mutual regard ; it is the epitomy of fellowship all through
the community.
These four things which belong to the family seem to
me to be the family's contribution to social progress ; loy-
alty to high ideals, a sense of duty, a realization of priv-
ilege, and fellowship.
What are some of the things that attack these ideals
in the family? Well, of course, divorce courts break up
the bond of loyalty ; that lack of altruism which Spencer
defines for us, which is action for the benefit of another,
rather than action for the benefit of one's self. The lack
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The Family and Social Progress
of that, just pure selfishness, does not always bring fam-
ilies to the divorce court, but it strikes at the family.
What strikes at duty ? Well, a great many things. One
thing is the capitalization of the child in the home. It is
not merely the poor fathers and mothers who earn their
daily bread who have to capitalize everything to make
ends meet, who do this. The child may be capitalized for
the sake of a sort of priggishness ; it may be regarded as
a sort of a credential of pride. We like to say, ''This is
my boy ; he has taken all the prizes at school, and he is
mine." We think, 'T have got an automobile, and I have
got that boy, and I am a good deal of a fellow." The
child may be brought out to be exhibited to satisfy her
parents' vanity. There is, of course, a just pride; but
not when it spoils the child and makes a prig of him.
Then there is the character incubator process ; letting a
mechanical process do for the child what the mother and
father ought to do. We have all heard the story of the
man who went into a Nevada mining town and saw the
sign over what he supposed was a saloon, '*No mother
here," and he was terribly shocked. But an old miner
explained that that wasn't a saloon ; it was a place where
they sold incubators. We have the incubator habit when
we turn off on the school the things that should be done
at home. We have too often given up the Sunday after-
noon story, the privilege of the child to have the mother's
training.
Then there is that which attacks the sense of fellowship
in the family ; when brother and sister are both looking
out for number one instead of the other person. It is
the spirit of the fuss-maker. In my early ministry I had
a good, old neighbor who didn't see eye to eye with me
on anything theologically, but we used to spend interest-
ing evenings together ; and he had on his wall two mot-
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Addresses World* s Social Progress Congress
toes, worked in worsted. One was the familiar text,
"Blessed are the peacemakers" ; but the other was his
own, "Cursed are the fuss-makers.'' When the brothers
and sisters are all the time making a fuss in the home be-
cause they don't get their rights, then trouble begins, and
the spirit of fellowship is destroyed.
I have mentioned some of the things that attack the
four cardinal points ; loyalty by all sorts of disloyalty ;
privilege by being misconstrued, and fellowship by the
fuss-maker. Widen out those four points as the family
must be widened out to make society and see how the
analogy fits. These four vices are what we are contend-
ing with to-day as the obstacles to social progress. We
must have loyalty to high ideahsm. We have seen how
Carl Marx stood out and sacrificed a great deal for the
sake of loyalty to his ideals, and we must admire him for
that even if we do not agree with him. We have it to-
day interpreted in the trenches of the great war and in
the heartaches left in the homes of the soldiers. We have
splendid examples of loyalty in the hospitals and on the
field, and also in our own homes and in examples of
social s'ervice that may represent as much sacrifice as
going to the front.
The sense of privilege is developed when we realize
that it is a privilege to help our fellow-men ; that privilege
is a clear call to our best manhood and womanhood. I
think the family has contributed to social progress an
idea of loyalty, of duty, of fellowship that calls for our
best eflforts and is a challenge to every man and woman
to be up and stirring. We hear the noisy minority, but
we don't always hear the great body of people quietly
doing their work. Think of all your friends, of the happy
families, of all those who are doing their duty in that state
of life to which it has pleased God to call them. Think
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The Faniilv and Social Pro ([r ess
<b'
of all those who are feeling the privilege of living in this
twentieth century. "The shallows murmur, while the
deeps are dark." I hope we shall sometime have a paper
that will print headlines in the morning, saying, "Forty
thousand families were happy yesterday." "Ten thousand
bankers were honest yesterday." "Any number of per-
sons were trying to teach the pure gospel of Christ Sun-
day." It is time we give the innings to the people who
are doing their duty, and not to the minority who are
making the noise. We have every reason for hope and
ambition.
Now, my thesis has amounted to this. I believe the
family lies at the root of all social progress; just as man
is the architype of the animal kingdom, so the family is
of the social scheme. I believe that in the family we need,
in these days, to be very careful to preserve these four
cardinal points of loyalty, duty, privileges, and fellow-
ship; all four. And it seems to me that it is just here
that the family ideal will help in the social ideal. There
are great federations for self-interest, as well as for serv-
ice. Federation for self-interest shows itself in the labor
unions, and that is legitimate. The federation for serv-
ice shows itself in organization Hke the Red Cross. But
the federation for fellowship, for which the family stands,
is beyond them both. We are thankful for what we have
done, but we want to go yet farther ; we want to have all
four qualities dominant. What would that imply?
We have what is called socialism; that may involve
three of them. In many honest hearts it does. It has a
right to organize for self-interest; downtrodden people
ought to have their rights. Of course they should or-
ganize for service, as Marx and others have taught. But
what the family says is that now as you organize for self-
interest and for service, there is also a higher kinship,
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
and that is this relationship for which the family stands.
When we interpret that into our high ideaHsm, we speak
of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.
If we think only of the brotherhood of man, it may be in
terms of self-interest or of service ; but when we bring
in the higher idealism, fatherhood, then we come to the
idea of one blood in all races and nations in the earth.
It is the widened instinct; and it seems to me that there
is a lack just there of a dimension which we need to
stress. In socialism, derived from the idea of the socius
we may have a great ideal ; but we need also filialism,
from the word "filius"; that, it seems to me, is what the
world needs to-day. Are we losing the filial relation?
Does the social program involve the breaking of family
ties? We see examples of it on every side. I have read
of an old mother of eighty-seven who had to sue her son
for support, and another of eighty, forced to apply to the
court for relief because of the indifference of the son.
We have heard of old fathers and mothers put into the
cheerless hall bedroom. Is the filial instinct lessening?
The sense of reverence in the child needs to be empha-
sized, the sense of obligation for the father or mother. I
can only touch upon this; but just as there is a sense in
the family for a need for filial responsibility, to round out
the family life, so socialism needs this element to give
perfect form to the whole vision. We need to rally
around this new word, "filialism," as the supplement of
socialism. We must think not only of the brotherhood
of man, but also of the filialism of man, and the Sermon
on the Mount indicates what the children of the Heavenly
Father should do. We are getting one-sided. Economic
questions are not the only questions in civilization. We
must be filialists rather than socialists.
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The Family and Social Progress
So, from the family we get the vision of social prog-
ress; and these ideals, just because we are hving in such
strenuous times, need all the more attention. I used the
figure of the compass ; on the great liner almost every-
thing is changed since the days of the Mayflower, except
the compass, this one thing which has to be watched more
carefully than it was three hundred years ago because of
the complicated iron and steel and machinery which may
make that little needle swerve. You will find on the
great ships, three compasses that must be consulted, one
to rectify another. And so the very complexity of mod-
ern life has made it necessary to guard all the more care-
fully the one thing by which it must be guided. So it is
with the family and its ideals, and the contributions which
the family makes to social progress ; we must watch and
guard them.
The fleur-de-lis which you see on every compass, was
originally, we are told, a cross. Let us take the cross, as
a symbol of sacrifice. Just as the old compass needle
pointed to the cross, so now in the fundamental thought
of the twentieth century, must be the realization that,
whether in the family or in society, for the highest devel-
opment, there must be sacrifice.
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Chapter VIII.
THE MOVEMENT FOR PEACE AND SOCIAL
PROGRESS.
BY DAVID STARR JORDAN.
Bishop Bell, Ladies, and Gentlemen : I want to
talk to you especially of what men are planning to do
after this war is over. The war is plainly enough the
direct result of rival military establishments ; it is the
result of preparedness for war; the result of having
thirty thousand officers, more or less, in each of the great
nations constantly on their toes, ready to jump, constantly
thinking about nothing else but war; constantly devising
schemes for pushing the nations to their ruin.
There is now the greatest crisis in the history of the
world since the Reformation, and this crisis has very much
in common with that. You may remember that in the
time of the Reformation, the great financial establishments
of that day got hold of the machinery of a great church,
and proposed to use it for the robbery of the people in
the name of religion. Now we have similar, great estab-
lishments carrying on similar rivalries and robberies in
the name of national defense. Before this war began,
the nations were spending ten million dollars a day in in-
surance against war; ten million dollars a day in the sa-
cred name of peace, but expended in measures for bring-
ing on war, and, sooner or later, war was necessarily the
result. As you might say, it was like two express trains
running on converging tracks, and the only thing that was
being done to insure against wrecks at the point of con-
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The Movement for Peace and Social Progress
vergence was for both to put on all steam in the hope of
reaching the junction first.
Since 1908, when the Austrians took possession of
Bosnia, we have had what the British call a **dry war" ;
what was practically war was going on, but no blood was
shed ; everybody was ready, but nobody was actually kill-
ing anybody. On the first of August, with the ultimatum
on Servia, this "dry war" changed into a *'red war," a war
of blood. And behind all this was also the sinister influ-
ence of the great firms that furnish ten million dollars a
day in ammunition and arms to the nations, and which
make a clear profit of something like a million dollars,
just as the great establishments in the time of the Refor-
mation made money out of the corruption that was then
going on.
Then behind all this again was the exploitation of
China, of Turkey, of Africa, where men invested their
money because they could make more profit than at home.
They make more because these countries have gold and
silver and diamonds and oil and copra and other things
which are valuable in Europe, but not so much so at
home. They went into these countries, too, because you
could get labor there for almost nothing, while labor in
Europe was dear; these men could get labor for almost
less than nothing by the judicious use of force. So we
had "red rubber," rubber mixed with blood, from the
Congo. Practical slavery exists wherever there is exploi-
tation on a large scale. With this goes the building up of
banks and railroads. Both of these are very useful to the
people exploited ; there is nothing wrong in exploitation
unless it is wrong; unless it is accompanied by crime,
and unfortunately a great deal of it has been accompaniea
by crime. It has been the habit in Europe to say that
wherever a man from any country goes, the diplomacy
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
of his country goes with him. If a man is in the "red
rubber" business, his diplomacy goes with him, whether
he is German or French or Enghsh. But it is very weak
unless it wears brass knuckles, unless you have a navy or
an army to demonstrate with and back up the exploiter,
or invade the interior, when the people rise in revolt.
A "sphere of influence," for instance, always means
rascality ; they often interfere and overlap, and produce
tremendous rivalry and trade war. This has been called
by the French "la course vers I'abime," the road to the
abyss. All of us have been able to see for the last six
years that unless this sort of thing stopped, unless the
increase of the navy, and conscriptions stopped, we were
going to take the most awful punishment, we were in-
viting the most awful catastrophe that the world has
ever seen. We have depended on finances to stop it be-
cause it meant the ruin of all the corporations. We have
depended on industry to prevent it, and the working men
were all against it; but every war carries with it such
an atmosphere of lies and hatred that it has afifected the
common men in every country on earth, until they cannot
see straight. After a country goes into war — and this is
true even of Great Britain, which has always been a level-
headed country — the atmosphere of lies and hatred is such
that the people are confused. It acts just as it did with us
in our infamous war against Spain. We could have set-
tled that whole matter without the loss of a single man
if we had only allowed our minister in Madrid to continue
the negotiations and settle the matter. When any war is
once on, as EHhu Root said, there is no question so trivial
that nations will not fight over it if they want to fight,
and no question so great that nations will not settle it
if they want to do what is right and proper.
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The Movement for Peace and Social Progress
There are no causes behind this war except the long
rivalry of rich exploiters. It has been a war of steel and
gold ; an attempt to frighten competitors so that they will
shrink back ; the attempt of rival nations to protect their
adventurers.
All of the nations are guilty ; the one best prepared
strikes first. The one with the longest arm is guilty of
raking in most of the wealth of other nations. The whole
thing is wrong. A nation has no right to protect its ad-
venturers when they are engaged in crooked business.
Either the nation must say that it will not protect these
adventurers at all, they must take their chances, or else
it must say that these men must be engaged in honest
business ; they must have an open sheet of sales, and con-
duct their business so that it will stand inspection. The
railroads in Mexico are examples of this ; anybody can
buy into them. The illicit cases in Mexico belong for the
most part to business of an irregular kind.
When this war is over, it will not have settled anything ;
no war does. Our great war in the United States didn't
settle the question of union or slavery. Those questions
were settled by the obvious fact that there was no room
in the United States for rival republics ; and slavery was
doomed from the very beginning. It was settled in the
human mind. The fact that one side starves out the
other; the fact even that one side is beaten and the other
victorious didn't settle anything; these questions are not
settled until they are settled right, outside of war. I
don't believe this war will settle anything at all. A war
against militarism by militarism can only result in a vic-
tory for militarism. Militarism consists of a disposition
to say, ''We don't care for fair play ; we want whatever
we can get." It depends upon the spirit of the people,
whether they are willing to treat other people fairly,
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
whether they are willing to look folks in the face, or
whether they prefer to depend upon the navy for their
"punch," or whether they regard the navy as the instru-
ment of liberty in the hands of a free people. The time
must come when all the armies of the world will become
police armies. The difference between the army and the
police is that a soldier knows no law except the orders of
his commanding officer; the policeman is subject to the
law like any one else, and is just as likely to be punished
as any other delinquent if he breaks it, while every law
on earth or in heaven is broken by the soldier every day.
No war can be righteous ; it may be inevitable or neces-
sary, but not righteous, because the first act in it is mur-
der, and the next robbery. Each war is directed chiefly
against women and children. The soldiers are protected ;
they are given every help in the way of medical service
and nurses and food ; but the women and children in time
of war have no shelter whatever. If they get on the firing
line, they are of no more importance than jack rabbits.
One thing that we who are working for peace want to see
is the body of every woman and every baby made as
sacred as every flag is now.
But by working for peace, we mean more than just
stopping the fighting as our end, and a return to six in-
fernal years such as followed the seizure of Bosnia by
Austria. We want internal peace, and real friendship be-
tween one nation and another. We want the boundaries
of nations to be as safe as the interior. Many people in
Europe think that the greatest achievement in America
is this great boundary line, thirty-five hundred miles long,
between the United States and Canada, without a soldier
or a gunboat, and which is perfectly safe. There are no
murders across that border or any other kind of danger,
any more than across the borders of California and Ore-
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The Movement for Peace and Social Progress
gon; there are no men on either side who are not subject
to law. Where nobody is loaded, nobody explodes ; and
when nobody is loaded in Europe, there will be no explo-
sion there, either.
This war is more hideous than any other war because
people have been thrown from a high state of civilization
into none at all. This is causing the greatest confusion ;
it is going to set all the honorable and God-fearing people
to struggling for a way of settling these problems. We
cannot remain self-respecting as things are, and if we
cannot reconcile the principle of nationality with our self-
respect, the principle of nationality will have to go. The
best thing I ever heard Ex-President Roosevelt say was
that it always pays for a nation to be a gentleman.
The greatest development in international life, since
the time of Jesus, was that during a time like this, but
almost infinitely worse, because then each city was armed
against every other, when, about three hundred years ago,
Grotius wrote his book on international law. It is under
a cloud now because one party in the war has never read
it, and the other party thinks that the neutrals are so good-
natured that they won't mind a few infractions. But a new
internationalism will arise out of all this because we will
make it arise. The young men of this century now alive
will find opportunities of heroism that even the field of
battle cannot offer. In fact, the field of battle is the last
place to look for heroism at present, for the modern sol-
dier is a mere target for machinery which he is forced to
face. But outside the field of battle we are going to have
much to do, as much as Luther and Wesley. We have to
reconstruct the morals of the world as these men recon-
structed its religion.
What, then, are we going to do? This war will prob-
ably end in something like a drawn battle. Jean de Bloch
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
warned us that great armies could not be handled. We
have brought the armies into battle lines as long as from
here to Los Angeles ; one runs from the Yser to Belfort,
with millions of men on each side; the other from Lem-
berg to Chernowitz, and neither side, so far, has been able
to gain much. There were thousands of men wounded in
the battles about Ypres a few months ago, and nobody
knows who won. Somebody asked the other day who
won the California earthquake; of course, nobody won it;
it was a defeat all around. The same is the fact here it
Ypres where as many men fell as in the whole Civil War,
and yet nobody knows who won that battle. In the Car-
pathians nobody knows much that is going on because the
censor prevents ; but as many men might be lost as at Jena
or Waterloo without the name of the place ever coming
to us, and if it did, we couldn't pronounce it, and so we
would have to let it go. It is all useless, and will end
in something like a drawn game.
Prophecy is usually impossible ; nobody can see a
week ahead. But the chances are that the war will end
in the latter part of the summer in a drawn game, and
that the treaty of peace will not settle anything, partly
because the pressure to stop will be so great ; the loss will
outweigh everything. There has been nothing compar-
able to the losses in this war, both in money and men, and
it must result in exhaustion. They have already spent
on this war more than the value of all the property in
Russia, more than all the farm lands in the United States
and Canada are worth — all thrown away. They are
spending in this war about ninety million dollars a day,
and it must all be paid sooner or later. The principal
never will be, but the interest must be paid during many
years to come by the working men of Europe ; for the
"men higher up" will raise the cost of living and move
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The Movement for Peace and Social Progress
the cost of war down until it falls upon the people, who,
from day to day, are making- additions to our national
wealth. They are going to throw a great deal of it off
on us ; they have already made enterprise in this country
impossible because no man knows how things are going
to turn out, and that makes it impossible to borrow. And
this has been true, not only since the beginning of the
war, but for two or three years before, when people knew
that the war was coming.
Ignorant people talk about Mr. Wilson's policy and the
tariff being responsible for the hard times. Why, any-
thing like that isn't a drop in the bucket compared with
the suppression of European capital. There are two hun-
dred billion dollars represented in the bonds and stocks
of Europe; what are all those worth now? Nobody
knows, now, where any corporation will stand when this
war comes to an end.
I was in London during the first two months of the war,
and I know that the British government spent seven hun-
dred million dollars to keep the banks solvent. It got
back all but fifty million dollars, but the reason for this
action was that the banks had pledges to receive bills of
lading and one thing and another that made it necessary
for the government to do this if it didn't want an instan-
taneous crash. It was important for the whole world to
keep the banks going, for London is the clearing house
for the whole world. It would be a catastrophe for Cal-
ifornia if every bank disappeared; how much greater
would have been the damage to the world if the London
banks should disappear, where there was twenty times as
much business of this kind as in any other city. Much of
this now comes to New York, and thus may benefit us ;
but, in a general way, loss is loss, and a loss anywhere in
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
the world is distributed everywhere, just as the loss from
the San Francisco fire was scattered all over the world.
I was in Auckland, New Zealand, at that time, and the
wealthy men were scurrying about there in New Zealand,
to get money to pay their obligations on the fire insur-
ance; our San Francisco fire made a panic in New Zea-
land.
There is going to be an exhaustion of life in this war
that will be tremendous. There are already about three
million Germans killed and about as many more on the
other side. When I was in Bulgaria, a while ago, I gave
a lecture in the great hall in Sofia. The subject was "Bul-
garia in the Eyes of the World." After the lecture was
over, some eight young women, all of them very attractive
and all dressed in black, came up and spoke to me, and
they said, *'We are the widows of officers in the Bul-
garian army who were killed in the war; we want to
thank you in God's name for what you have done to keep
Bulgaria from going into the next war." Bulgaria
is still out of it, but the pressure upon her is very strong
to get her into the war, especially on the part of Germany,
to get her to come in on their side. The people want to
keep out, or, if they do go into it, they want to go in on
the side of the allies. As conditions are now, in that coun-
try, Macedonia is full of wandering bands of farmers
who have lost all their property and who are invading
neighboring countries. In one place, as a result of the
last war, a town was cut off from its own railroad sta-
tion. That sort of thing makes people dissatisfied. When
there is nothing else to do, the people take to the road.
There were a million refugees when I was there, going
out of the country. A population about as large as that
of California was ordered to get out ; to take with them
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The Movement for Peace and Social Progress
what they could, and leave the rest. It isn't strange that
some of those people should become brigands and outlaws.
What is going to be the cost of this war, the effect on
future generations of killing all these men? My friend,
Mr. Stead, used to be fond of talking about the picked
half-million who are the natural leaders, the educated
men. In Great Britain, about two-thirds of the college
men are in the army. There is not an athlete left in Ox-
ford nor in Cambridge. The same thing is true in Ger-
many and in France ; the universities are simply marking
time. While this picked half-million is being sent off
to be killed, London alone is carefully preserving two
hundred thousand men, men of the slums. I have seen
them, shambling, adenoidal, soaked with liquor and with
vice. They have been saved to be the fathers of the next
generation. There is an Egyptian proverb which runs
like this : "Father a weed, mother a weed, do you expect
the daughter to be saffron root ?" Do you expect the chil-
dren of these men to be British yeomen?
The greatest danger in this war is that the very men
who are the most fit to settle the questions that will arise
after the war is over, are precisely the ones who will be
killed during the war. It is going to leave a weakened
nation, and our statistics all go to show that it will leave
a weakened nation for a hundred years to come. It will
be at least a hundred years before they can come back to
the level of force and initiative that they have now, for
these are the very qualities most desired in a soldier. It
has taken a long time to get over the effects of the Napo-
leonic wars, and the British wars in India, and the losses
in this war are far heavier than in any of those.
Some one said the other day that the peace palace at
the Hague was the world's grimmest jest, its most costly
failure. Carnegie gave the kingdom of Holland a mil-
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
lion and a half, and the Dutch people have put up some
fine, red brick buildings with white trimmings, among
bulb gardens, as their fashion is. It isn't a palace; just
a great hall for large meetings, and smaller halls for other
purposes, and it only differs from this building here in
being handsomer outside and in its being possible to hear
some one inside.
Since I began talking to you, the nations of Europe
have already spent money enough to build a peace pal-
ace, and before this time to-morrow they will have spent
enough to build forty peace palaces. If the war goes on
for a year longer, they will spend enough to build a peace
palace like that in every town in Christendom, and in
heathendom, too, if there is any difference after the war.
That brings me to say one thing. People say Christi-
anity didn't stop the war. That is a compliment ; it is
equivalent to saying that war is wicked. It didn't stop
it ; Christianity didn't try ; if Christian people had, they
would have succeeded. Finance didn't stop the war, nor
industrialism, nor socialism ; nothing stopped it. Al-
though not one man in a thousand in any of those coun-
tries wanted war, there was no voice raised against it.
There was no way for public opinion to be expressed,
no way to dissipate the atmosphere of lies that surrounded
everything. The people of every nation believe that the
war was begun by some one else and that they are fighting
in self-defense. Somebody must be mistaken, and when
the mistake comes out, there will be indignation. There
isn't a man bold enough to say, 'T wanted this war" ; not
a nation that will stand up and say, *T wanted the war
and brought it on." Maybe the people who brought it
on will never bring it on again for fear they may be
caught, and it might be dangerous to be caught at it ; for
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the people will find themselves loaded down with debts
that they cannot pay.
One cause of the war was because people would not
stand the burden of militarism much longer.
It had come to the point where British bankers would
not loan money on the continent any more, because the
people were likely to say, "We have borrowed twenty-
seven thousand million dollars which have been spent on
war and there is no way to pay any of it back; we ought
to pay the interest, but we cannot pay the principal." So
the banks have seen the handwriting on the wall and the
possibiHty of repudiation. How much will be repudi-
ated, it is impossible to say, but whenever it is repudi-
ated, it will be no longer in the hands of bankers and
speculators, but in the hands of widows and orphans and
trust funds. There are a great many people who are
pensioners, living on the interest of borrowed money,
who would be very helpless if their income were de-
stroyed.
When this war is over, there are some things that we
hope to work out. When I say "we," I mean that there
are twelve distinct plans which have been developed for
working these matters out, by different groups. The
oldest one of these plans was drawn up by the Union of
Democratic Control in London, of which Norman Angell
was at the head, and he is one of the great citizens of all
time. He is still a citizen of CaHfornia, and that helps to
give him a voice in the old world, because Calif ornians
can generally be heard wherever they are.
The next was the plan of the sociahsts of southern
Germany; these men have come out clearly and strongly
as to what they want.
Next comes the World Peace Foundation of Boston. I
belong to that and helped draw up their plan.
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
Then comes the Women's Peace Party, which is, per-
haps, more important than any because women make
about half the population on this side, and will form about
two thirds of the population on the other side, on account
of the killing of the men; and the leader of the whole
movement, so far as America is concerned, is one of the
wisest women that ever lived — Jane Addams. They are
going to hold a meeting at the Hague, at which the
women of all countries will be represented.
Then there are also the women of Norway and Switzer-
land, and there are other groups in different parts of the
world, including the labor party, and all of them have
made statements of what they want.
The treaty of peace probably will not incorporate much
of all this ; it may be Hke the Treaty of Ghent, and say
simply, "We hereby stop fighting." There will be bit-
terness and recriminations, and it may be as well if there
is no definite victory, for victory is often more dangerous
than defeat, as has already been shown in the case of
many nations. It leads to vain glory and extravagance,
while defeat often leads to economy and industry, and
helps make heroes of the men in civil life instead of those
on the field of battle.
We want to see Belgium restored; military necessity
for us here is no plea for destroying neutral nations. The
world belongs to the neutral people, to the people who are
not fighting. The nations who are fighting, no matter
how good the cause they fight for, become lawless and
insane, and the world should belong to the people who
keep their heads.
We want to see France restored. The discipline of de-
feat has done France a great deal of good ever since the
military element there died out twenty years ago. Since
then, France has been on the upgrade more than any
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other nation in Europe. The evils of long-continued war
which they had to overcome, were very great, but they
have been slowly and steadily progressing; and in this
war you will notice that France has kept her head as
well as any of the nations. She was almost helpless. Her
hands are not clean, for she had no business in Morocco,
and she has meddled in the Balkans, but the French peo-
ple were not responsible ; it was impossible to control all
the great capitalists and exploiters. The body of the
French people has been steadily rising in the scale of
progress, and we don't want to see anything taken away
from France.
We want democratic control ; we want the people to
have something to say as to whether there shall be war ;
they are the ones who have to pay, who have to die, who
have to bear the long suffering, and yet the people have
nothing to say about it even in France and England, for
even there these things are settled almost entirely with-
out consulting them.
We want a council of people to succeed the concert of
powers. The concert has accomplished all sorts of mis-
chief in trying to maintain a balance in the Balkan states.
If those states had been allowed to keep together, they
would have made a power that would have tipped the
scales. Accordingly they have been kept irritated. There
should be no more quarrel between Bulgaria and Servia
than between California and Oregon, if things were ra-
tionally managed.
We want to see military preparedness stopped ; nobody
ought to be prepared to kill. The law will stop you if you
go about the streets with ''military preparedness." Every
nation prepared for war is a danger. This nation will
never be really prepared for war because our nation is
not built that way ; a nation so enlightened as to grant
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suffrage to its women can never be turned into a military
nation. The reason why it is so difficult to get conscrip-
tion in England is because it is a free country.
We want to see the Hague conferences, which ought to
be taking place every eight years, we want that to be-
come a real thing ; to make it honest, and we don't want
men sent there to defeat the very things that they ought
to sustain. The United States has sent a man every time
for that particular purpose. When an effort was made to
prohibit the dropping of bombs on cities, it was an Amer-
ican who made it impossible, by the enforcement of the
unit rule. That is one of the things that have made this
present war so contemptible, is the use of bombs in
attacking innocent people, and it was America's insistence
on the unit rule that makes it possible, because a man was
sent to the conference who didn't want to stop war.
Besides the Hague Congress, we want to see the Hague
Tribunal developed as a permanent court. Once you
have a permanent court, there will probably be almost no
questions to refer to it. W^e have here forty-eight sep-
arate States ; from the European point of view, you might
suppose they would be always quarreling. How many
questions have been brought before our Supreme Court,
involving complaints of one State against another? I
only remember two, and neither was important. There
has been no serious feeling between the States since we
have had the Supreme Court, and there would be nothing
in Europe. People talk about our troubles with Japan,
and scoundrels and fools talk about an inevitable war ; but
there has never been any difficulty with Japan that
couldn't be settled over night, if we wanted to. There is
one real question, and that is whether the State of Cal-
ifornia has the right to drag international questions into
the United States, and deal with them as she chooses. If
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she has, she has, and if she hasn't, she must quit; but
that is not a Japanese problem, nor do the Japanese con-
sider it so except certain jingo newspapers, Japanese and
American. Just as soon as these things leave the first
page of these papers, nothing more is thought about it.
I have heard men declare that we must fight Great
Britain, and in a week we had forgotten what the trouble
was. We don't want to kill men for such reasons as
that; there is no sense in it. There is nothing so pre-
posterous as war.
We want to see a reduction of armaments. There have
been a good many plans for this, and it must come, be-
cause the nations simply cannot stand the burden of
what they are paying; it is too expensive. They are
carrying too many kings for their business, just as some
kinds of business carry too many partners to be supported
by the profits. If they were to let us settle that, I think
we should be disposed to turn out a few of them and let
them go into some more honorable business. Among
those to keep, I think we would pick out the king of Bel-
gium first, and after that the king of Italy, and after that
we might be puzzled. We want to see the navies and
armies turned into international police forces of some
kind. They seem to think that it is necessary to guard the
ocean from pirates. Well, there are still a few that come
from China, but not many. We want to police the ocean ;
but more important than that, we want to make the ocean
free and open all the time, just as the sidewalks and
streets are open for traf^c, no matter what private quar-
rels may be going on in the apartment houses and hotels ;
that sort of quarrel is not allowed to disturb the street,
nor should quarreling nations be allowed to disturb the
ocean ; they ought to be obliged to keep their warships
sealed up inside the three-mile limit; they have no busi-
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
ness in the open sea. We want to see that neutralized
and free for all the world, and all the channels of traffic
as well. One of the most prolific causes of ill feeling be-
tween Germany and Russia is that half of Russia is shut
off from the sea, and they are forced to ship across Ger-
many. We want to see the Dardanelles, and Gibraltar,
and Aden, and the Kiel Canal, all of them international-
ized, without fortifications, and free to every ship. There
would be a tremendous gain in friendship and freedom
from wars.
Constantinople has for so many years been a disgrace,
partly because it has been allowed to shut in traffic. We
want to see it made a neutralized state, constructed out of
what is left of Turkey in Europe and part of Turkey in
Asia, and made a free port. Constantinople has the most
beautiful site of any city in the world, but it has been
for all these years merely a dirty camp of grafters ; the
government has been as bad as possible, and then some.
If that were made a free city, under the protection of the
nations of Europe, there would be a wonderful future
before that city. There is no reason why so magnificent
a site should not have a wonderful future, and if Con-
stantinople were allowed to develop, Smyrna and Sal-
onica would also develop. Salonica was a city in the time
of St. Paul, and the people then were called the Thessa-
lonians. Thousands of people have been forced out since
a year ago in March, because it has been impossible since
the Balkan war for men to make a living, in spite of the
fact that Salonica is right across from Mt. Olympus, right
across from Greece. It is impossible to live there, for the
land is being constantly tramped over by armies and
brigands, and this sort of thing has been going on ever
since the time of St. Paul. I have seen rich farming lands
within a hundred miles of the city, all grown up with
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briars and weeds, because it was not safe for the people
to plough.
We want to see Armenia, which has suffered so long,
be made autonomous in some way. Russia wants to take
Armenia to her bosom, and Armenia may consent ; there
are degrees even in hell, and they may prefer to leave
Turkey and go over to Russia.
Poland is torn all to pieces — she has been for the last
century, and is still torn between the conflicting armies.
Her citizens are fighting under three flags, none of them
their ovv^n, and Poland has been getting even by oppress-
ing the Jews, and the whole thing is as bad as it can be.
We would like to see something done for Poland ; Aus-
trian Poland has had some autonomy, but the other parts
have not, and the Poles have been subject to great op-
pression.
We would Hke to see Finland have a fair chance. The
people there are among the most enlightened in the world,
but they lost their autonomy some time ago.
We would Hke to see Alsace and Loraine have auton-
omy somehow. The difficulty has been, not so much that
they were French and hated the Germans, but that they
were Germans taken back but not made citizens. They
were Germans of the second class, subject to all sorts of
petty oppression. One man, who was going out of busi-
ness, was brought before the police court and fined be-
cause the words in his announcement had been arranged
in the French instead of the German order ; barbers have
been punished because they used French words, and a
milliner was fined for using the word "mode." There is
no German word for "mode," but they insisted that the
milliner should use a germanized form. This has been
worse in Alsace, where the people are all of German
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
blood, than in Loraine. In Alsace ten of the cities were
once free cities of the empire, and they don't forget it.
So we want to see Alsace govern itself. Many people
have demanded that these provinces should have a vote as
to which country they should belong to, but it is not that
so much as a question of their being equal when they have
chosen. Association with Germany has many advan-
tages ; the interests of Alsace are German ; they want to
be Germans if they can be Germans in full equality. If
they are to be French, then they want all the rights of
other Frenchmen. France has made one mistake. In-
stead of making itself a federation, the old provinces have
been abolished, and France has become too much central-
ized, and this has militated against the outlying districts.
Both Alsace and Loraine were opposed to this. So we
find, when we come to study any of these questions that
there is a great deal of inside history, so that these things
are not so simple as they look. It isn't enough to say to
these people, ''Vote where you want to go" ; that doesn't
answer the question. The question is answered in the
Scriptures, 'Tn honor preferring one another." We must
treat one another decently.
We want to see tariff abolished. We have one here,
but it isn't so very harmful, comparatively. But Europe
is not much larger than the United States. We have free
trade among the States, but they have tariffs, not merely
for protection, but for aggravation. Russia has been ag-
gravated by Germany, and there has been irritation be-
tween Germany and France, and between Austria and
Servia. Servia has been so shut in that it is almost all
anything is worth to ship anything in. Rumania is shut
in, and so is Bulgaria by Greece. There is what is called
the "dead sea of commerce" in that region, where it is
impossible to get the products out. I have seen farmers
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bringing Turkish tobacco a hundred miles over the Greek
frontier, paying thirty-three and one-third per cent duty,
and then transporting it on camels to Salonica and there
paying harbor dues. That doesn't leave very much for
the man who raises the tobacco, and it might increase the
price.
These tariffs are an aggravation everywhere. One of
the things that made Germany strong was getting rid of
all her internal tariffs ; getting rid of all of them made
commerce possible inside of Germany. The military de-
velopment has been merely a parasite on the progress of
that country, as it has on that of every other.
We want to stop sending our armies and navies to for-
eign lands to help adventurers there ; we don't want to
send our army into Mexico unless we know exactly what
we are doing. The men we are asked to protect may be
filibusters or gamblers, and there is no reason for sending
our American boys down there to avenge the death of
men like that. It is worth while to make them pay for it,
but not worth sending others down to be killed, too.
I have talked longer than I meant to, and I haven't yet
told you half that I wanted to of what we hope to do.
There is going to be enough for all the young men to do ;
but at present the main thing to do is to keep this country
steady so that our influence will always stand for fair play
and peace.
Lincoln's greatness consisted in the fact that he could
count the cost, and America should do just that — count
the cost of any line of action.
The great war will come to its end some time, through
exhaustion, through failure of finance, through starva-
tion, through sorrow, for every nation engaged is already
a nation of mourners. There is little prospect that the
war will end with any victory at arms. It may be that
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
Jean de Bloch was right. The armies of to-day with their
hundreds of miles of battle front are too large to be
maneuvered. The giant guns and swift instruments of
murder balance one another. Already the chief force of
the war is directed against non-combatants. Little head-
way has been made by either side in what is commonly
thought to be legitimate warfare. Except for the crush-
ing of Belgium, who had no part in the quarrel, the Ger-
man armies have accomplished little. Except for parry-
ing the stab at France, the allies have made small head-
way. And everywhere the non-combatants have suffered
as much as the armies.
The warfare at sea on both sides is directed mainly
against the property of private citizens. The raids on
seaside resorts, the capture of merchant ships, the whole
matter of war zone blockade and food contraband is di-
rected against people who have no way of striking back.
This is not war, but piracy. The only difference between
this and the old-time piracy is that the modern freebooters
frame their own rules, while the old-time outlaw defied all
statutes.
Sooner or later we must expect the final treaty of peace.
There are many things we should like to put into this
treaty, things essential to its future security and the well-
being of Europe ; but we shall not get many of them.
We may not get any. The chances are that the drawn
game will end in a truce, not of peace, but of exhaustion.
This may be best, for the real enemy of civilization, the
obsession of military force w^iich has subdued Germany,
might overpower a victorious Britain also. Defeat is
often salutary, and all must meet at last in the dust of
defeat.
After the treaty is signed, the real struggle begins.
Then comes the test of our mettle. Can we build up a
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solid foundation of peace amid the havoc of greed and
hate? The war settles nothing. Constructive work be-
longs to peace. It may take fifty years of peace to put
Europe in order. When the killing is stopped, perma-
nently or for a breathing spell, the forces of civilization
must mobilize for law and order.
There are many things we need to make European
civilization stable and wholesome. Every one of these
will help. We will push whatever we can. We want for-
eign exploitation limited by law and justice. We want
foreign adventurers no longer backed by diplomacy and
armed force. We want no more "red rubber," red copra,
or red diamonds. We want open diplomacy and we want
democratic control of foreign politics. Whatever is secret
is corrupt, and the management of armies by a select few,
makes them a menace to the many.
We would have a council of people instead of a concert
of powers. The people who pay and die should know what
they pay for and why they are called upon to die. We
want all private profit taken away from war. We want
to see armies and navies brought down from the maxi-
mum of expense to the minimum of safety. We want to
see conscription abolished and mihtary service put on the
same basis as other trades. The main cause of modern
war is the need of finding something for armies and
navies to do. We want to do away with piracy at sea and
murder in the air. We want to conserve the interests of
neutrals and non-combatants. We want to take from war
its loot and its glory. Without these, the one or the other,
it would not be easy to drive men to fight. We would
hope for an abatement of tariffs and of all obstacles that
check the flow of commerce. With a free current of
trade, the eastern half of Europe would lose its long un-
rest. We cannot mend all the defects of geography, but
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
we may refrain from aggravating them. Land-locked na-
tions will not be tempted to hew a way to the sea if we
do not make the sea artificially distant by barriers to
trade. We would like to see men and nations pay their
debts, not struggle in rivalry in the evil art of borrowing.
Then we would like to see manhood suffrage every-
where, and womanhood suffrage, too. We would like to
see parliaments made effective, not set apart as debating
societies, without power of action. We would Hke to
see land reforms, tax reforms, reforms in schools and
universities, in judicial procedure, in religious freedom,
in sanitation and temperance, in the elimination of caste
and privilege wherever entrenched. We would see every
man who lives in a country a potential citizen of it, if he
minds his own business and meets the requirements made
of other citizens. We would like to see the map of Eu-
rope redrawn a bit in the interests of freedom and fair
play. We would like to see the small nations made as
stable as great ones, for a small nation, if relieved from
the terror of war, other things being equal, may do more
than its share in the work of civilization. The greatness
of a nation has nothing to do with its bigness. We be-
lieve that a nation can have no welfare independent of
the individual welfare of its people. That nation is great-
est whose people have most individual initiative and most
abundant life.
We would like to see Belgium restored to the "per-
manent neutrality" which is its right, and Luxemburg as
well. W^e believe that the ''Balkans should belong to the
Balkans," and Serbia to the Serbians. We would like to
see, if may be, Constantinople neutralized and autonomy
restored to Alsace-Loraine, to Finland, to Armenia. We
would like to hear from the Danes in northern Schleswig,
and from the Poles in Posen and Galicia, the people con-
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suited over every change in boundary lines, not forgetting
that to pull up new roots may not atone for the past in-
jury to the old ones. We would like to see the Hague
conferences made serious by sending to them real states-
men, intent on the welfare of the people, not diploma-
tists, sparring for advantage. We would like to see the
Hague Tribunal dignified as the International Court of
the world, to create international law by its precedents.
We would like to see judicial procedure and arbitral de-
cisions take the place of war talk and war preparations.
We should like to see the channels of commerce opened
wide, neutralized, unfortified, and free to all the world,
the Bosporus, the Dardanelles, the straits of Denmark,
the straits of Gibraltar, the Red Sea, and the canals of
Suez, Panama, and Kiel as well. Whatever is good for
the world is good for every nation in it, and whatever
really aids one nation, must help them all. All this leaves
plenty for the friends of peace to do.
Not much of it will go into the treaty of peace. We
will not be discouraged if we get none of it. We have
time on our side, and the opportunity for education. A
few resolute men, like-minded and fearless of conse-
quences, brought on this war ; a few men, like-minded
and resolute, could make war impossible, if they had the
backing the weight of their cause demands. To get
peace is to do away with standing incentives to war. War
itself cannot do this. War cannot end war. Only the
activities of peace can end war; and among these activ-
ities he who looks for it may find in full abundance, the
long-sought ''moral equivalent for war."
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Chapter IX.
THE PACIFIC COAST AND THE PEACE
MOVEMENT.
BY ROBERT CROMWELL ROOT.
My theme this afternoon is the interest of the Pacific
Coast in the peace movement. We sometimes wonder
what the interest of the United States may be in the peace
movement, or what the interest of Europe may be in the
peace movement, or what the interest of Asia may be in
the peace movement ; but I should like to consider the in-
terest of our own portion of this great Union, and speak
of the interest of the Pacific Coast in the world-wide
peace movement. Not that we wish to estimate ourselves
beyond our due, but rather to see what the part is that
we must play, in world affairs, and the part that we
should take in national and international affairs. For the
question involved in the peace movement is not simply a
local one, although we shall view it in a measure from a
local standpoint, but is international and worldwide; and
just as we are a part of the union of American States, we
are, in a still larger measure, a part of the world, and
we must decide what our destiny and our part in the
world's affairs is to be. For whether we will or no, you
and I are not merely citizens of California, we are not
merely citizens of the United States; to-day you and I
are world citizens, and we must measure up to the stand-
ard of world citizenship or we fail in our duty to our
fellow-men. We fail in our duty to our fellow-men un-
less we measure up to the standards of international cit-
izenship.
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The Pacific Coast and the Peace Movement
Now, in the first place, I want to consider the interest
of the Pacific Coast from the commercial standpoint. I
shall take that first because I consider it, important as it
is, the least important of all, for it is the standard of the
dollar rather than of the man. But from the standpoint
of the dollar, what is the interest of the Pacific Coast in
the peace movement? Much in every way. The great
things of the future, if you will but study them, you must
decide, it seems to me, are to be around the borders of
the Pacific Ocean. We of the Pacific Coast face one side
of that ocean, and the rising powers of the Orient face
the other side. Now, what is the commercial problem?
You and I can scarcely understand it when we recall the
fact that in China there are four hundred and thirty mil-
lion human beings, just in that one nation, and that na-
tion is beginning to rise and come into its own. And
that nation has tremendous resources. It can already, I
am told on good authority, put down pig i;-on in Pitts-
burgh cheaper than the Pittsburgh manufacturers can
manufacture it for themselves. Why? China has coal
and iron in immense quantities side by side. You who
are familiar with commercial developments in Europe,
will recall the fact that England's supremacy commer-
cially is due largely to the fact that she had, side by side,
coal and iron to manufacture at the time when she had
to change her policy from an agricultural nation to a
manufacturing nation.
Beginning back in 1741-46 England began to make this
change, when she could no longer feed her own people,
but was compelled to become a manufacturing nation.
China is more fortunate than England, because she can-
not only feed her own people, but can also produce man-
ufactures cheaper than any other country on earth ; and
the Chinese young men are gathering into the colleges
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
everywhere in this country and in Europe that they may
fit themselves for developing the immense opportunities
of their own country.
The adjoining nation of Japan is in somewhat the same
position. These two nations are just emerging into a
plane of citizenship comparable to our own. They have
opened the doors of their country to our civilization.
What is going to happen when China and Japan import
as many goods as the United States does, per capita, or
as much as England or Germany or France? We can
hardly get an inkling of the future possibilities of trade
with the Orient.
Some of you have heard of Wu Ting Fang. On one
occasion, when he was in America, he made this state-
ment, speaking of his own country, *Tf the Chinese
were to lengthen their cotton shirts but one inch,
that one inch of additional cloth would consume the en-
tire product of the cotton fields of the United States for
one year." From that alone you can get some idea of the
possibilities of trade with China. It would take thirteen
million bales of cotton during one year, for just that one
additional inch.
China imports to-day only eighty-five cents per capita
of imported goods, but when she increases that to the
standard of the United States, or only half our standard,
which is, I believe, eighteen or twenty dollars per capita
— and that day is coming — what will that mean? It will
mean the extension of factories and mills and farms and
of every avenue for the employment of labor. What will
it mean when China buys Hke that for her people ? It will
mean that we can sell more of our goods to China than
ever before, in increasing ratio and increasing quantities.
Goods from the United States and from every nation will
go to the Orient. It means larger employment of labor,
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The Pacific Coast and the Peace Movement
more wages, more consumption of raw materials, and a
better industrial and social condition of the people that
take part in that trade that is going to develop between
China and the United States. If China can produce her
own food largely, and also manufacture, as the indications
are that she can, so that she can outsell other nations, the
question arises, Would it be better to make friends with
China, or enemies ? The question of war and peace is in-
volved. For it seems to ifte very evident that war is the
greatest destroyer of commerce. Take our Civil War; it
nearly destroyed northern commerce by means of the
southern ships of war. War is the great destroyer of
commerce. Commerce is supported by industry and la-
bor, so that a large commerce means, directly and indi-
rectly, better conditions for labor, more factories and
mills, and a greater extension of the benefits of the in-
dustry of men. With the extension of commerce into
Japan and China, there must go a development of our
commerce, and with it a development of friendship and
international ties in various degrees of intimacy between
the Orient and the Occident.
It seems to me that as we study this question of the
Pacific Coast and its relation to the Orient, it becomes
a question of world peace depending not merely upon the
citizens of California, Oregon, and Washington, but upon
all those interested in the Pacific Coast.
One thing further in regard to commerce. If China
and Japan and their four or five hundred million peo-
ple are going to be such a significant commercial factor
in the future, affecting our welfare or ill-fare, what would
be the sane policy of this country? To develop that com-
merce and make it what it should be, and take our share
of it and prosper thereby ; or shall we, with the short-
sightedness of the militarist, the short-sightedness com-
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Addresses World* s Social Progress Congress
mon to the war advocate and to the jingo — shall we de-
stroy the possibilities of future trade with the Orient,
with the millions in China and Japan and the Malay pen-
insula ? Shall we not cultivate it, merely from the stand-
ard of dollars and cents that our own people may be
benefited ? It would be simply good common sense ; it
would bring prosperity to us as a people and to our la-
boring classes.
Not only is that true, but there is another point. Sup-
posing, as I indicated a while ago, that we should be
fooHsh enough not to make friends with China, with its
great natural resources and its teeming millions, far be-
yond anything we can attain in centuries, for they have
four hundred per cent the start of us in population.
China has resources beyond the natural resources of the
United States in minerals ; she has all that is necessary to
build up a nation. Shall we make friends, which is just
as easy as to make them our enemies? Why not make a
friend of China? A few years ago, when we returned
ten or eleven million dollars of indemnity, did we not
make a fast friend of China ? We know now that China
will stand by the United States just as long as the United
States stands by China.
I remember well hstening to one of the most eloquent
Chinamen I ever heard speak, a citizen of this great city,
Ning Pong Choo. He said that on one occasion, when
speaking to a lot of teachers, he pointed to the Stars and
Stripes and said, 'That is the banner of a nation that
China will never lift her hand against." Why? He had
just referred to the fact that we had been a friend to
China, that we had acted justly toward China, and because
of that, this brilHant Chinaman, speaking for his nation,
said what he did. We have won her friendship, and with
friendship will come trade ; war would destroy both.
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The Pacific Coast and the Peace Movement
Again, what is the interest of the Pacific Coast in the
matter of peace with Japan? Let me go back just a Httle
in the history of the relations between Japan and the
United States. You remember that about 1852 or 1853
one of our sailors, Commodore Perry, somewhat diplo-
matically as well as somewhat forcibly, opened the doors
of Japan to western civilization. Japan appreciated that
act of ours very much. Japan also appreciated the
friendly attitude of our ministers who went to Japan
soon afterward. Read the story of those early ministers
of ours to Japan and of the attitude they took toward
Japan, and you will see that for a long time, at least,
Japan was most friendly to the United States, In 1863,
unfortunately for us and some of the other nations, some
of our vessels anchored in a roadstead in Japan in a for-
bidden place. They were warned that it was not a
proper place, but stubborn as they were, the English,
French, and some of our own captains refused to move,
and some guns were fired at them from batteries on shore,
and of course they fired back and did considerable dam-
age to the batteries. But at that time they were satis-
fied with that. The next year, French and English and
American vessels entered the roadstead and demolished
it and exacted an indemnity of which our share amounted
to $785,000. Time went on, and in 1883 our Congress
returned that unjust claim against Japan, because it was
an unjust claim, and that made Japan our friend and tied
her to us with hooks of steel. Japan felt that we were her
friends because of that act, and she has acted ever since
as though she wanted to be friends with us.
Just one other thing to show how Japan appreciated
this act of returning money which we had collected from
her unjustly, how she appreciated our fair dealing. Do
you remember how, following the Golden Rule, what
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happened when this city lay in ashes, following the earth-
quake, Japan turned over to this city two hundred and
forty thousand dollars in cash to help San Francisco. We
had played the part of a friend and had acted in the spirit
of the Golden Rule, and when opportunity offered, Japan
did the same to us. When our fleet went to Japan in 1908,
no country on earth gave that fleet so royal a welcome as
did the little empire of Japan. Just a few days ago, over
here on the exposition grounds, at the time that the Jap-
anese village was dedicated, some of you may have heard
Mayor Rolph state that Japan proposed to give her beau-
tiful building, with its gardens, valued at a million dol-
lars, to this country as a mark of her friendship and her
appreciation of our friendly attitude toward her.
Do you not see how we must cultivate friendship with
the Orient ; how we may win them as friends, and through
our friendly relationship with them, develop a tremend-
ous trade with these nations?
But if, on the other hand, we are not wise enough to
make friends, and instead choose to make enemies of
them, there are tremendous possibilities of evil on this
Pacific Coast, as well as for good. That is what I want
you to bear in mind this afternoon. I want you to put
all the emphasis on the tremendous possibilities for good,
and to look at the other side only as a warning to turn us
away from a wrong attitude in dealing with the Orient.
We are sometimes told by the Jingo that Japan wants
to fight the United States. Let me suggest that after
what I have just said, it must be evident that Japan has.
done everything to show her good will. But suppose we
should stir up ill will. I remember a few years ago, when
the Japanese fleet came to Los Angeles, the admiral ut-
tered these words in a speech, ''The strength and the
efficiency of the Japanese navy is due to the influence of
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The Pacific Coast and the Peace Movement
the United States." The increase of our own army and
navy had influenced Japan to make hers also strong. If
we build up a great army and navy, we invite them to
do the same, and when there are great armies and navies
on both sides, you know what happens ; you know what
has happened in Europe. What happened in Mexico in
1841 ; what happened in the Philippines ? Our policy
should not be to build up a big army and navy, because
the nations of the Orient will follow in our footsteps.
They look upon us as their teacher, and the way we go,
they will go. And as we know, armies and navies are not
the guarantors of peace, but a temptation to destroy.
There is one other thing in connection with the Orient,
and that is our international relations. As a part of this
great nation, we are interested in its international affairs.
California herself has brought us into international dis-
cord with Japan, and I regret that it has done so ; I re-
gret that the alien land law was passed in California.
For, as a matter of fact, the Japanese population was de-
creasing instead of increasing at the time that law was
passed, and time would have settled that question better
than legal enactment. It was a matter that should have
been dealt with from Washington and not from Sacra-
mento. Such questions should be dealt with only by the
National Government, since they involve international
relations.
We must deal with these questions from a national
standpoint and not from a local one ; the latter course
leads to endless confusion and endless conflict, whereas
if they are left to the National Government, they can be
solved far more justly and easily than from the capitals
of forty-eight States.
I wish that every one were familiar with some books
recently published on this subject, such as "Asia at the
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Door of the United States," written by a Japanese who
has also written other books which are well worth read-
ing. Or read ''J^P^i^'s Message to America," and Doctor
Aked's reply to it. These questions concern you and
me as citizens of this great State and Nation, and as
world citizens also, and if we are to measure up to the
standard of international citizenship, we must study them,
and they must be settled in the light of justice and fair-
ness and the Golden Rule.
One other reason why the Pacific Coast is interested in
the peace movement you will understand if you will spend
a few hours at the exposition. You will find that the
Orient can give us many lessons in art and in literature.
I remember a friend of mine who was at the St. Louis
Exposition told me that one of the members of the
Committee on Fine Arts who judged the exhibits there,
had said that the committee was repeatedly required to
give awards to Japan, until finally the Japanese member
of that committee actually begged the committee not to
give so many prizes to the people of his nation. 'Tor,"
said the Japanese artist, *'my country has been producing
art of that character for two hundred and fifty years, but
we were never esteemed a great nation until we built bat-
tleships and began to kill people." What a criticism that
was of our standards ! The Japanese are an artistic na-
tion, and we can learn through them of art and literature
and some important industries. For indeed I want to
state the truth, even though it hurts. We, in California,
can learn something of industry from tlie Japanese in our
midst; they have taken some of the waste places of the
State and made gardens of them. I invite you to inspect
certain districts of California where they have done just
that. And I have no special plea to make for the Japanese
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The Pacific Coast and the Peace Mozement
more than any other nation ; my plea is merely for justice ;
right, not might.
For these reasons I am convinced that we of the Pa-
cific Coast should study these questions of international
peace, not only from the standpoint of industry and com-
merce, but from the higher standpoint of art and liter-
ature, and still higher than these, by the command of
God himself, who has commanded that we shall love our
neighbor as ourself. Here we have in the Orient untold
millions of neighbors, and the future civilization is going
to be largely determined by the influence of Christian
men. Let us not forget the request of the young republic
of China when she asked for the prayers of the Christian
world that she might be guided in the ways of right and
justice. This is the greatest opportunity that ever opened
to the Christian missionary and to this country, for this
nation lies right opposite our own shores.
It is a big question — immense ; not one of the little
things that may come into our lives, but the biggest ques-
tion that confronts the world to-day, this problem of the
Occident and the Orient. Shall we face it like men, or
shall we slink away from it Hke cowards? That is the
question we must answer. Shall we do the right thing;
do to them as we would have them do to us? Shall we
not be brave and true to ourselves and our fellows?
My time has come to an end, and I have just one
thought more. I beheve, as Bobbie Burns sang a hun-
dred and fifty years ago, that a man's a man the world
o'er, and I believe that it is your duty and mine to
work to bring about the brotherhood of man. The time
will come when humanity will rejoice, and men and
women join hands, and these problems be resolved rightly
and justly to all humanity.
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Chapter X.
WAR AND SOCIAL PROGRESS, OR THE DIRECT
ACTION OF WAR ON THE HUMAN RACE.
BY CHARLES ATWOOD KOFOID.
It may seem to some of you very strange that I should
have put up all these charts of potato beetles and sweet
corn and primroses, and you may suspect that in some
way the college has made a mistake and sent over an
agricultural lecturer. But before I get through I hope
that I shall make plain to you that if the nations of Eu-
rope had learned the lessons which biology is teaching,
they would have waited a few days before going to war,
for if modern science teaches one thing finally, it is that
war is a biological mistake and a failure, and that these
primroses and beetles have taught one thing that we
should learn, namely, that the human stock is of great
value, and is governed by law, just as is the stock of any
other living thing. We have hitherto taken it for granted
that the Creator took care of the human stock, quite too
much; we have been very careful about the horses and
the pigs and the chickens, but very careless about our
responsibility for the preservation and the type of the
human race, which is only temporarily in our charge.
This war which is now going on in Europe, illustrates
in human society the ruthless application of one phase of
biological teaching, which was the outcome in part of the
industrial struggle of the last century. Charles Darwin
lived in an atmosphere of the great struggle between
labor and capital, which exterminated so many of the
smaller interests, and resulted in the survival of the
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War and Social Progress
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strong, and he evolved the doctrine of natural selection,
which is, that the progress of living things has been the
result of a struggle for existence, with the resulting sur-
vival of the fittest ; that is, of the strongest, and the grad-
ual growth and differentiation of the Hving world and
of human society in consequence of this struggle.
He was not himself an experimentalist. He thought
the process went on so slowly, that it was cumulative,
and took such a long time to be accomplished, that it
would be foolish to try to experiment himself to see
whether this struggle and its effects could be actually
demonstrated. Patient workers since his day have forged
a chain of evidence that has shown to the world at large
that it is possible to question the force of the dogma that
dominated the industrial development of the last century,
and that has been one of the great factors in the minds
of men which has justified the modern industrial system
as right because it is according to nature, as Darwin
taught, and which has also underlain the thinking of the
men who have controlled the destinies of all the nations.
It was embodied in the books of Treitschke and Bern-
hardi. The latter makes the statement that no nation is
entitled to existence that does not fight for it ; that war is
one of the methods of national progress and that the im-
portant thing is merely to choose the right time when you
are sure to win ; that that is the method of national ad-
vancement. When he says this, he is not speaking of the
preservation and evolution of the human race, of the peo-
ple, but of national advancement.
Now, since the time of Darwin's teaching, biological
science has made certain discoveries, which have given us
pause, and perhaps led to a different opinion as to the
relative importance of this process of natural selection in
nature in one important particular, in its being the source
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
and cause of the evolution of life and of man, and the
fundamental principle leading to the higher forms and
types of life. According to Darwin's teaching, evolution
is a very slow process.
Now, these lines of development in recent times rest on
two main lines of discovery. One is the careful analysis
of the process which we call heredity, and the other a
careful, experimental analysis of the effects of the en-
vironment on living things ; of the changes which it pro-
duces.
In the first place, to take the analysis of heredity. The
discovery of the brilliant aniHne dyes, and of paraffine,
etc., has made it possible to magnify plants and animals
enormously and thus see the processes that go on in the
living substance. It has thus been shown that all living
things are made of little chemical centers, each capable of
doing work, of releasing energy. We call them cells.
They have a chemical center, a structural center, which is
different from the material around it ; it is a center of the
surrounding parts, with complementary qualities. For
instance, one has a positive and one a negative electric
pole, and the interaction between this center and the
surrounding substance results in the release of energy.
All plants and animals start from one single cell, which
results from the union of two parent cells. If you pick
out the Httle center, the cell will disintegrate and die ; it
is necessary that the two parts should both be present.
The two parents contribute absolutely equally to the
single cell that starts life, so that every individual is a
double, made up of two complete sets of little structures,
one set from one parent and one from the other parent,
and is a complex of both lines of ancestry.
When these little sex cells are formed, they are not al-
ways alike, even when they are formed from the same
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War and Social Progress
parents, because they go back into the double sets, and
pick out, as it were, one single implement from the double
equipment. They will take this characteristic from one
parent, and one from the other, and so build up a different
character from either parent, and that is why children
of the same parents are unlike. This contributes to our
appreciation of individuality. All persons are different
from one another unless they are identical twins, and
each one is a part of the same cell and has the same equip-
ment as the other. This is the scientific foundation of
the story of the little girl who told her mother that she
had had two baths that morning and her twin sister none ;
they were so much alike that they could deceive even
their own mother.
Organisms, then, are doubles ; they get their ancestry
equally from both parents.
When we cross two unlike individuals and unite them
in a hybrid and then in the second generation that hybrid
again distributes the qualities from its two parents, it
will distribute them in combinations different from either
parent.
For instance, when we cross these two different colored
strains of corn, light and dark, rough and smooth, we
get, in the second generation, four kinds of corn instead
of the two which we started with.
Natural selection has nothing to do with this ; new char-
acteristics appear in nature without natural selection.
That comes in afterward, after they have appeared, and
says whether they may live or not, and as long as these
new kinds stay inside the dead line of natural selection,
they survive. This is one reason why we get new things.
They have got these new qualities out of the substances
from which they are formed. We don't know why they
have them; we don't know why one has the qualities
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
which it has, or how they have been formed out of the
elements of which it is composed. When in heredity we
get the combinations, we can predict what the quaUties
are going to be, but not how they will combine.
Natural selection, then, does not afford us a basis for
the development of new forms of life by heredity.
In another way, nature is changing because of her sen-
sitiveness to the surroundings. It is a fundamental char-
acteristic of living substances that they are sensitive to
their surroundings, marvelously sensitive.
To give an illustration of the extreme subtlety of that
sensitiveness. If you take a guinea pig and plant in its
body some germs which have never lived in its body or
any of its ancestors, they will gradually die out. The
body of a guinea pig is sensitive to the introduction of
foreign substances, and will produce a poison against
them, even although its ancestors never did.
Now, all this has a very important bearing on the ques-
tion of war. I will illustrate what I mean by an example
of a hybridization between a gray and a white mouse.
We get a gray mouse, but it forms its sex cells either
gray or white ; they have a double charge, gray or white,
never both, and so when they meet, they meet according
to the same ratio, and in the second generation there is
oije gray mouse, one white, and two mixed. Human
traits also follow this law. There are some people whom
we call geniuses ; some have, for example special mathe-
matical ability, and some other forms of genius. So that
if two persons, one with such ability and one without it,
mate, their children will none of them have that ability,
because the absence of such ability is dominant over the
presence of it, just as the white color disappears when
gray is present. In the same way the absence of mathe-
matical ability dominates, when it is mated with mathe-
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War and Social Progress
&'
matical ability. But when the children of such a mating
show no such ability, yet of their offspring in the follow-
ing generation, one will have no such ability, one will
have it, and there will be two who can transmit it, but
cannot express it.
Now, what will happen to the European countries when
they wage war with machinery, and send their men with
mechanical abiHty into battle to be exterminated, what
is the next generation going to do to supply the type of
individual in the community that is needed for its mechan-
ical work ? They cannot be made to order. Mrs. Harri-
man has endowed an institution for the study of genetics,
and that institute has been studying the lines of descent
of human qualities, and they have demonstrated that most
human qualities are hereditary ; f eeble-mindedness and
other human defects, color blindness, six-fingeredness, the
tendency to have a white lock of hair, imperfections of
stature, a tendency toward certain diseases, musical ca-
pacity, mechanical capacity — these are all hereditary.
How is war going to act on these hereditary traits?
What is going to be done to the human stock? What
types are picked out by war for destruction? Does it
pick out the weakling and eliminate that type? It does,
to some extent. On account of the hardships in the
homes of Europe, many a weakling will be sent to an early
grave. But the battlefield picks, not the weak, but the
strong, and especially men with a capacity for leadership.
The total of deaths of officers is exceedingly heavy. Also
the total of men of mechanical ability is very high because
war to-day is a war of machines, of submarines and battle
ships and rapid cruisers and aeroplanes, machine guns,
and automobiles — of every device that man can invent to
destroy human life by machinery and explosives. What
type of man is necessary to run these machines ? Every-
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
body knows that not every man can run these compHcated
devices. When the Germans made up their aerial corps,
they went into every factory in Germany and said, '*Who
is your best and most reliable mechanic? we want him."
And so he was enlisted for as long as they could use him.
Their aerial corps of thirty-five hundred men was made
up of the very best and finest mechanics, taken out of the
best factories.
Mechanical capacity runs in families. If you destroy
half of these families, the male stock, you will inevitably
reduce that element in society to a proportional extent.
Doctor Jordan has referred to this in his address.
We have in the United States some five hundred thou-
sand feeble-minded persons, some of them just barely
competent to take care of themselves, some of them not
able. We have thousands of insane, thousands deaf,
dumb, and blind, thousands in our penitentiaries and in
hospitals ; three or four per cent of the human population
is appreciably imperfect physically, and it would be hard
for most of us to pass a thoroughly first-class physical ex-
amination ; we all have some defects. What does war
take ? Does it take this weakling stock ? No ; it leaves
it all at home ; if it did take this stock, they would all ap-
pear on the pension rolls later. Every defective man of
that sort is excluded, unless it becomes necessary to take
even the men of sixty-five and fathers of five children,
as is now being done in some of the countries. These
men of imperfect qualities are left behind to be the fathers
of the future generations of Europe. Suppose you give
them just three per cent of an advantage over the other
half which is more capable, what is the effect going to be
in twenty-nine generations? That the weaker stock will
form three-fourths of the population, if this is a true
interpretation of the biological facts. The effect of war
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War and Social Progress
will tend to eliminate from the human stock the stronger,
the more courageous, the more inventive type — such men,
for example, as Lincoln Beachey. But modern European
civilization is built about the type of men who can handle
machinery, who are inventive.
In one other very important particular this war is go-
ing to leave its record on the human stock. I spoke, a
moment ago, of the second great line of biological investi-
gation. The environment changes human stock. It was
long held that the use or disuse of human organs made
a change in the human stock. Darwin held that the char-
acteristics which the individual acquired were inherited
by his children. Not all of them are, because a lot of
them merely affect the body, which is the carrier of the
sex cells which perpetuate the living substance. For in-
stance, in one of the great agricultural States, they en-
deavored to improve the breed of fowls, and for that pur-
pose they picked out every hen that laid two hundred eggs
a year. After twelve years they found that the descend-
ants of these picked fowls only laid an average of one
hundred and ninteen eggs a year, while the average fowl
lays one hundred and twenty-five. They had produced no
change. But they found that if, instead of taking a mis-
cellaneous selection from a miscellaneous stock, they
looked out for certain families of fowls and picked them,
then they really began to change the stock. If you select
the larger half of any stock, the offspring will show the
whole range of variation ; but if you go to a family that
has particular forms, you will get that common quality
reproduced.
But it is possible to change that hereditary make-up,
which may be revealed by this selection. It is possible for
the environment to change the individual ; but not in the
way that Darwin thought. He thought the acquired char-
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
acteristics of the individual were inherited. Modern sci-
ence declares that the offspring may be changed by en-
vironment, but not always in the same way that the parent
is changed. If there comes a heavy frost in early spring
where potato bugs are abundant, you will find during the
summer a lot of little, pale dwarfs. They are changed in
their hereditary make-up by the action of the sudden
shock and chill to the parents. Stimulated by this ob-
servation, Professor Tower has been raising potato bugs
in green houses, where he can hammer them day and
night by changes of temperature, and by giving them
these shocks just at the time when the sex cells pick out
their equipment and are in a sensitive condition. The
result is that if they are hit hard, somehow they are
changed, and in this way you get a new pattern in the oft*-
spring. In this way it is possible to take the potato beetle
and shock it and get three different kinds of beetles, illus-
trated on this chart, a little, yellow dwarf, a pale dwarf,
and a fully-equipped type, and they all breed true after-
ward. We have changed them in a single generation and
permanently, and natural selection had nothing to do with
it. Natural selection will determine which shall survive,
perhaps, but it had nothing to do with the origin of these
new types.
He has shown that he can always take these potato
beetles, and shock them in this way, and thus, by the en-
vironment, change the individual, and also change the
race ; and the greater the shock the greater the change.
Is the human stock also susceptible to the environment ?
If we take the honey bee, after a day of hard work, and
examine the cells of its brain, we find them collapsed,
shrunken, and exhausted. A guinea pig subjected to sur-
gical shock under an anesthetic, exhibits shrunken and
exhausted cells. The human brain, after shock, presum-
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War and Social Pro stress
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ably shows the same thing. The impact of the shock goes
to the central nervous system, and then back to all parts
of the body, including tha^exual organs, which are ex-
ceedingly susceptible to changed conditions.
For instance, take a wild animal, and domesticate it,
and nine times out of ten it will not breed, or its breeding
will be disturbed. The mallard duck will lay many more
eggs in captivity than when wild.
An illustration of the effect of such changes is shown
clearly in the effects of alcohol on guinea pigs. Experi-
menters have taken stock of healthy ancestry, subjected
one part to the fumes of alcohol for forty minutes a day.
The pigs become slightly intoxicated in that time, but they
remain hale and hearty and die of old age, just as the man
who uses alcohol for sixty years sometimes does. But of
their offspring, eighty per cent are still born at birth, or
epileptic or runts, and the two latter transmit these qual-
ities to their offspring. Now, I am not lecturing on tem-
perance, but on the effect of the war. The alcohol affected
the sense organs of the guinea pigs and was transmitted
to the sex cells ; they were modified by the stimulus, and
they threw a new pattern and changed the hereditary
character of the guinea pig. And it doesn't make any
difference which parent is drunk. It is significant that
in Switzerland there are two seasons of the year when a
larger part of the feeble-minded children are born, and
those periods are nine months after two festivals at
which there is much drinking.
What has all this to do with this war? War is one of
the greatest, the most terrible stimulants to the human
race that has ever happened. The shock of war is being
pounded upon millions of men, both in the field and at
home, and the fathers and mothers of the generation to
come are being stimulated by the shock of war in a ter-
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
rible way, and the results of these shocks to the central
nervous system will be transmitted to the next generation,
and will write their record. It is a law of nature, and no
diplomacy or charity will enable us to avoid it.
If all this is true, if war does thus deteriorate the race,
why hasn't it destroyed the race before? There is some
reason to think that Rome fell, not because of the hook
worm or malaria, or what not, but because they sacri-
ficed their fine young men in the colonies. And Spain
suffered for the same reason, and Great Britain also be-
cause they depleted their stock in war and conquest. Nor
will this stop with the war itself ; for, as Doctor Jordan
said, this war must be paid for, the interest at least, un-
less the debt is repudiated. It is going to be wrung from
labor; it will mean longer hours of labor for women and
children, and for the fathers and mothers, so that the
effect will be spread over many generations — war will
write its record in the stock of the human race for gener-
ations to come.
Is there any actual evidence that war does thus affect
the children? There is a little. In France, after the
Napoleonic period, twenty years after the heaviest mili-
tary campaigns, there was a sudden drop in the height of
Frenchmen entering the army. Napoleon started with
five feet and four inches, and it dropped to five feet, one
inch. Since then, France has gained one inch of its lost
height, but it has taken twenty years to do it.
There came a sudden change in the quality of military
recruits ; they were fewer in number and inferior in type ;
the percentage of physical defects showed a marked in-
crease, quite in excess of the persistence in the decline
of height. That is, the facts indicate that children born
in the time of the Napoleonic wars were physically im-
perfect to a greater degree than usual.
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War and Social Progress
In Prussia, during the war of 1870-75, the death rate
of the children under five years of age showed an increase
of sixteen per cent over that of the time before and after
the war. Why, if this means anything, it was because
parents, in the period of the war, were under severe
mental and physical strain, and the shock of that environ-
ment of military activity, resulted in the deterioration of
the race.
There is just one little, bright spot in the whole busi-
ness, and that is this third beetle here. That beetle isn't
a bad one ; the others are smaller and weaker and not such
virile types ; but it is possible that the shock of war might
produce some virile types as well ; it increases the vari-
ation and may give us some compensation. That is a pos-
sibility that we must recognize, but it is a desperately
hard way to get it when there may be better ones.
There is one other fact that comes to us from biology
that has a bearing upon war, and that is that war is in
direct opposition to one very fundamental principle in the
structure and evolution of animals. We find, just in pro-
portion as the nervous system becomes more complex,
that there comes to be more and more social life. The
honey bee or ant has, in proportion to its weight, a very
large nervous system, and they have a highly developed
social life. Now, among all living things, man has the
most highly-developed, nervous system, and the most
highly-perfected type; it is like a switch-board in a com-
plicated telephone system, so that every part is in com-
munication with every other part, so that it is possible
for man to establish a wide range of relations and to
build up a system of social inter-relations because of
the physical structure of his brain. But man has no
saber teeth ; he has no claws to scratch with. Nature has
given him none of the organs of battle built into his body.
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He has a brain for social life, but he is now turning that
brain into an engine of destruction. In other words, he
has reverted to the time of the tiger ; he has gone back.
The principle of mutual aid Hes at the foundation of the
evolution of the family ; it is the fundamental basis of
human society, and war is a direct contradiction of the
whole principle of human aid, and thus is against nature,
if we read nature aright.
What, then, should be our attitude toward war? I
should teach biology, and keep on teaching it, in our pub-
lic schools ; these lessons should be taught to every one
of our children; this knowledge should be in the posses-
sion of every one. If every boy will follow through the
lessons taught by the sweet corn and the primroses in
the garden, he would be more careful of his own stock ;
and people would be more careful about war if they knew
the lessons modern biology is teaching.
I will not take the time to tell you what we might do to
stop war, for Doctor Jordan has already told you. There
is, however, one aspect of this matter which I have not
touched upon, and that is a question of psychology. We
are all fighters, by instinct; it is one of our most valu-
able qualities. We have this instinct to defend ourselves
and rise to a contest ; let us turn this force into other di-
rections, into art and literature and sport — even prize
fighting rather than war. Let us maintain this spirit, but
at the same time direct it in the right way, and regard
war as Richard Le Gallienne has wonderfully expressed
it in his poem :
''WAR.
'T abhor,
And yet how sweet
The sound along the marching street,
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IVar and Social Progress
Of drum and life, and I forget
Broken, old mothers, and the whole
Dark butchery without a soul.
"Without a soul — save this bright drink
Of heady music, sweet as hell ;
And even my peace-abiding feet
Go marching with the marching feet.
For yonder, yonder, goes the fife,
And what care I for human life!
The tears fill my astonished eyes
And my full heart is like to break ;
And yet 'tis all embannered lies —
A dream those drummers make.
''Oh, it is wickedness to clothe
Yon hideous grinning thing that stalks
Hidden in music, like a queen
That in a garden of glory walks,
Till good men love the thing they loathe !
"Art, thou hast many infamies,
But not an infamy like this.
Oh, snap the fife and still the drum
And show the monster as she is."
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Chapter XL
"KULTUR" AS AGAINST CIVILIZATION.
BY EDWARD BENJAMINE KREHBIEL.
I notice that the chairman very wisely refused to give
me a subject; there was some misunderstanding as to
what it should be, and so I have assigned myself the sub-
ject of "Kultur (or Culture) as Against Civilization."
I cannot very well refrain from reminding you that one
of the reasons, it is said, why the Germans spell "kultur"
with a "k" is because England has control of all the *'C's" ;
but the other word that I am also to speak of "civiliza-
tion," though it begins with "c," is the monopoly of no
one.
What do we mean by this term "kultur" that so many
nations are fighting about? Ordinarily, when we con-
ceive of our position in life — we, as Americans, others as
Germans, others as French, or English — we conceive of
our state as being independent, self-sufficient, superior to
all others. The people of every nation beHeve that they
have peculiar virtues in their state, virtues which because
they are superior, ought to be spread abroad, which are
worth fighting for, worth imposing upon other people,
worth compelling them to accept if they will not do so
voluntarily. They call that kultur. Now, as a matter
of fact, this conception that we have, that we are suf-
ficient to ourselves, that we live a really national existence,
that our existence is pecuHar, or at least superior, needs
to be considered.
Is this true economically? The capital of the world is
not confined to the bounds of a state ; it pays no heed to
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Kultiir as Against Civilization
them. As a matter of fact, one of the first habits of
money is to seek profits, interest, dividends ; it doesn't ask
whether it is being invested in the homeland or abroad,
but what per cent it is going to make. And if it finds
that an investment is more profitable in a foreign country,
to the foreign country it goes, no matter whether the Ger-
man or American eagle is stamped upon it. It will seek
dividends in Beluchistan, if the investment pays. Capital
ignores national boundary lines.
Interest follows the investment, likewise, and labor is
compelled to follow also, because if a man here invests
his capital abroad, he is very likely to compel labor to fol-
low it. Take, for example, the Japanese alien land law ;
when the legislature in California has succeeded in ex-
cluding this cheap labor, American capital will go to
Japan. The same kind of thing has occurred repeatedly
in history, but I haven't time to dwell upon it.
Let me go on. Exactly as investment goes abroad, la-
bor goes to seek it, and ignores international boundary
lines. One of the most expert speakers I ever heard,
one of the finest minds I ever met, was a laboring man.
I was speaking before a Socialist meeting, and in the
course of the meeting, a man arose. I found out after-
wards that he was a structural steel worker ; that he had
traveled all over the world in the pursuit of his trade, get'
ting his day's pay. He had seen far more of the world
than I had seen, or probably ever shall see. Such a case
is merely typical ; as I said, labor ignores national boun-
dary lines.
What is the food we eat ? Tea from China, coffee from
Mexico or South America, all sorts of things from out-
side the country. The silk and woolen that we wear is
manufactured abroad. There is no end to the things that
we eat and drink and wear that come from without the
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boundaries of the country. And therefore, actually, when
we sit down to table, we do, though ignorantly to be sure,
eat an international meal, and we wear international cloth-
ing. I have sometimes been disposed to say that I have
shoes of French calf, and a suit of English woolen, a cra-
vat of Chinese silk, and a hair cut made in Germany ; in
my appearance I am international.
The economic life in America, therefore, is not national,
Neither is the intellectual life, because the thoughts you
think are not American. The news that you read is world
wide. The philosophy that you study, the science that
you cultivate, the arts you admire, are international ; they
are not American. What would become of medicine if
we first of all had to discover if the germ of disease be-
longed to our nationality ? We pay no more heed to that
than the germs do. Cholera never asks about the Amer-
ican boundary line and whether it may come over. The
result is that the men interested in medicine are compelled
to forget that there are national boundary lines, and be-
come international in their activities.
And science; what would you say if the physicist were
to inquire whether the law of gravitation sailed under the
British flag? It would be absurd, of course; yet there
seems to be a conception that we have certain national
qualities, superior to every one else, and that we call
kultur.
Economic life is not national ; intellectual life is not
national. What is national ? Why, political life. But the
state is a juridicial entity; it is an abstraction, a legal
hypothesis, and this is the thing which constitutes what
is left of national existence. If I ask you if you are a pa-
triot, in what does your patriotism consist? Why, in
loyalty to this political, juridicial entity, which does not
really correspond to anything in your economic or intel-
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'i>
lectiial life. You are patriotic to one portion of your
being, but unpatriotic in some of the best features of your
life.
You may say this is not fair. Well, I will admit that.
You are not really loyal just to the conception of the
state as an abstract legal something, but to those prin-
ciples which are supposed to reside behind your state, and
which are called the "culture state." It is your form of
government, your form of business, your embodiment of
your conceptions of right and wrong, your conceptions
of social propriety, your ethical conceptions ; these are
our kultur. To these we give our adhesion ; it is these
which inspire our patriotism.
Now, there is no denying the existence of such a cul-
tural state ; but how does it work ? That is the important
thing. How does it deliver its message to man and influ-
ence life? Here are the Germans, the English, the Rus-
sians, all of them in the war, and all the neutrals who are
out of the war, who believe in their peculiar kultur,
which they think ought to prevail. How are they going
to make it prevail? The question is, how does this kul-
tur affect life; wholesomely? There are two possible
modes of regarding the matter. You may put this kultur
under hot-house conditions; you may exclude all foreign
elements which might cause it to deteriorate ; you may
keep it clear, pure, stimulated by rivalry with some other
kultur unit. The Germans will tell the people that they
must stand together, or they will be suppressed by the
Russians; and the English will be told that if they don't
titand together against the attacks from without, their
kultur will disappear, and will be overcome by the Ger-
man. So, for the sake of procuring the proper heat in
the hot-house, you use some other kultur unit as a scare,
which is going to extirpate your kultur unless you are
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strong enough to keep it out. You are loyal, you say, to
those high principles, which are superior to all other kul-
turs on earth.
There is still another view. That view is this ; that
even after a state has succeeded in defeating another, it
hasn't suppressed its kultur. Did the Germans, though
they absolutely overthrew the Roman empire as a geo-
graphical unit, destroy their culture, or the Greek cul-
ture? Did the English, when they invaded the British
Islands, absolutely obliterate the preceding elements ? Not
at all. If these elements were worth while at the begin-
ning, if they were fit, they were going to live, whether
under one flag or the other. They were fit to survive ;
they could not be suppressed by force of arms. You can-
not suppress mental ability or a conscience by force of
arms.
So, then, inasmuch as this doesn't seem to work, why
wouldn't this kultur propagate itself quite as well, if
there were not these conditions of rivalry between Ger-
many and England, Russia and Austria? Why wouldn't
the kultur work itself into human life and take its place
regardless of national boundary lines?
New England has been a portion of the United States
ever since it was founded ; yet when you go to New Eng-
land you still find characteristics of the New Englander;
they have not been lost. The Californian is different
from the New Englander ; he contributes his qualities, his
temper to the structure of the nation, and his kultur is
not endangered by the fact that he does not appeal to
arms to defend them.
To be sure it has been contended that this rivalry is
fundamental ; that the day you remove that element, the
day that the foreign country ceases to compete against
you, that day you grow lax, easy going, you degenerate,
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'<i>
and presently as a people you pass away. The motive
power of civilization, of progress, is inherent in strife be-
tween two or many units. Then, there is the other view,
which contends that a country like the United States can
keep strong and powerful by the sheer fact that it has
within itself the motives of progress ; in other words,
that it carries the power within itself, because each of us
is competing with every other in the state, and for that
reason we are quick to seize and grasp good ideas, and
are all of us stimulated to our highest activity, and to
growth, and our nation moves forward, and would if
there were no English or German or Japanese.
It is very hard to say which of these two views is right ;
whether we need the rivalry of states, or whether there
is sufficient motive power within the state. Personally, I
believe the latter is true. 1 believe the vitality of the
American people is sufficient to keep us as much alive as
we need to be, without the need of foreign competition.
If that competition were world-wide between individuals,
I think that competition would be adequate to give us all
the motive power for progress we could ever use, without
this national competition.
There is still another feature that needs to be dwelt
upon with a great deal of care. The cultural elements,
which are confined to the state and represent the state, are
not really a true picture of the life we have to-day. I
have tried to show that you, in your own being, have a
conflict between interests ; there is this adhesion to your
kultur, your national civilization ; and then there is the
fact that you think and live as a world being. In your
political life you are national ; in your economic and intel-
lectual life, you are international. You can't help it.
There is a struggle, a conflict. I call this the struggle
between kultur and civilization, because I conceive that
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the elements, which I call the chief things of civilization,
are those elements of international relationship and inter-
national co-operation. That state which is wholly exclu-
sive is not called a civilized state. When do you say
Japan became civilized? Why, the day that she stopped
her policy of seclusion ; the day that she began to inter-
act with other nations. Tliat day she became what you
call a civilized nation, depending for her progress in great
measure upon the wholesome inter-relations with other
peoples.
Turkey is not a civilized state ; China remained a back-
ward state until the day that she adopted international
relations, and now she is waking up, but is still to become
really civilized.
These two factors, then, kultur, representing one's
home life, as I may call it ; civiHzation, representing inter-
national life. I want to bring them both before you for
the sake of comparison. If a state has kultur, it is con-
fronted with the question of how it is to use it. Shall it
go out and impose it upon another state by force? If it
does, in that process it loses a great many things that are
a part of civilization. That is to say, its inter-relations
with other countries are cut by its attempt to impose its
kultur.
There is a war in Europe now, for the sake of kultur.
This war has resulted in many acts which we should call
vicious in civil life, and these things leave their effects
upon men's minds, if not upon their health. It has been
acknowledged that the Russian incursion into East Prus-
sia has left a blood taint of disease upon the race which
it will take four or five generations to stamp out Civili-
zation is being set back for the advancement of what is
called kultur, and for generations people will have to
suffer because some one tried to advance a national cul-
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Kultur as Against Civilization
'^
ture element. Can the cultural element be advanced in
such a way that everybody gains? Can that element at
home be made to react upon the world in a wholesome
fashion? Could we not have the same effect by allowing
it to spread naturally so that people could take it nat-
urally? Again I say, we are upon a speculative basis.
It has not been more than one hundred or one hundred
and fifty years since the world became economically and
intellectually a unit. That has been the result of im-
proved transportation and communication. It was Doctor
Bushnell who said that the road is the very mark of civ-
ilization ; nothing can make an inroad without making a
road. It represents the transfer of activities and thoughts
from one nation to another, and the status of this trans-
portation is an evidence of what we call civilization.
What do we call kultur? As measured in terms of
architecture, high art, music, etc., is it any less because
it happens to be outside your country ? On the contrary.
There is a kultur which you may, perhaps, call German,
but you would have great difficulty in defining it. There
is a kultur which you may call American, and you will
have enormous difficulty in distinguishing it from English
or German kultur. But suppose you could do so, over
and above all these divisions there is yet another group,
something that you have not classified, but which fits into
all the groups, which is the international kultur, or civili-
zation. This is the new thing, the coming thing, the thing
which has arrived, and you to-day see in the great strife
between the cultural factors and the factors of civiliza-
tion. Now the question for thinking men is this, Which
will we choose, and why?
It is not enough to choose, you must have a reason for
your choice. We have had enough of hasty choosing in
this war; people are too ready to spring to conclusions.
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As a plain fact, the reasons for this war run far back into
history and back into ignorance. The reason is largely
that Europeans are still under the conception that the
national life is something apart and free from the rest
of the world, and are not conscious of the truth that civil-
ization is gradually tending to absorb these cultural ele-
ments of the different states and make them the common
property of all men, and that process can be promoted
much more surely by other methods than by strife.
Which will you choose? As for me, I want to recog-
nize the fact that not only here are culture and civiliza-
tion, mutually exclusive elements striving against each
other, but I wish to announce my allegiance to civilization.
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Chapter XII.
THE FALLACIES OF WAR
BY WILLIAM TRUFANT FOSTER.
When I was traveling in Europe a few years ago, I fell
in with a number of young men, who thought that I was
an Englishman and treated me accordingly. I found that
they had no respect whatever for me, did not wish to
associate with me, and, so far as possible, tried not to
ride in the same car with me. By some chance they
found out that I was a citizen of the United States, and
at once their attitude changed. They tried to apologize,
and said that of course I understood that throughout
their school days they had been taught to treat an English-
man as a natural enemy, and that it was not proper for
them to show anything but scorn for an Englishman.
When I first heard of the outbreak of the present war,
that incident in my travels in Europe was the first thing
that came to my mind, and I realized that the war was, in
a measure, what the entire school systems of Europe had
been planning for. As I look back over my own
school experiences in the United States, I realize that
history, as it was taught to me, was largely a history of
the glorification of war. When I was a small boy, the
only heroes were heroes of the battlefield, and the history
that I learned was largely the history of armies and
navies and battles and wars and treaties. I cannot remem-
ber, as I look back on my history lessons, that there had
been singled out at all, for glorification, such men as have
gone into fever-infested districts and sacrificed lives in
order to save life; but those who have been held up as
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models for the boys of America for generations have
been those who have been chiefly successful in destroying
life.
It seems to me, therefore, that the best way of attack,
with the most permanent guarantee of success, and which
is the only agency whereby we may reach the next genera-
tion, is education ; and through that agency we must, year
in and year out, show the great falsity of war.
I am going to speak to you now for only eight or ten
minutes, and in that time I am going to mention five of
the great fallacies of war. They are all familiar to you,
and I need not dwell upon them. I mention them only
to say this : that at this time, when Europe is in conflict,
it is particularly important that we should not be led
astray by those whose business is war, by those whose
income depends upon the perpetuation of war and upon
the manufacture of the armaments of war. Particularly
now we should not be misled by the fallacies of war and
by the arguments for the continuance of war and its
accessories ; and we should particularly aim to bring
to the next generation a realization of the absurdity of
these arguments.
The first fallacy that I will mention is that there is
any glory in war. Sherman has described it, and the
glory of war is mere moonshine. Any one who knows
what the reality of war is, knows that there is no glory
in it whatever.
Another fallacy is that war is in any way necessary to
develop the manly virtues. There is evidence, abundance
of evidence, that the finest quahties of manhood are being
developed about us everywhere in the quiet ways of peace,
in the service of mankind, not in the destruction of it.
The argument that war is necessary for the development
of the manly virtues, is absurd, because if war tends to
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The Fallacies of War
do anything, it tends to select those who have the greatest
courage and skill, and kill them, leaving the weaker to
perpetuate the species. At a matter of fact, war in itself
develops many of the basest qualities of human nature
and brings them to the front, rather than the qualities
which we wish to perpetuate in men and women for the
upbuilding of the race. The exhibitions of moral courage
in every-day life are far finer and far more needed than
the physical courage which is comparatively common.
Another of the fallacies constantly thrust upon us in
the matter of war, is the idea that wars are made by the
pressure of public events; that wars are not made by
individuals or groups, and that consequently we, as
human beings, have no control over them; that they will
come in spite of us. That is absurd. Wars are not made
by the pressure of public events, nor by the pressure of
public opinion, except in very rare instances; but they
are made, as is evidenced by the present war, by a very
few individuals, who take things into their own hands
and go ahead where the public cannot follow them, be-
cause the public, at the time when war is declared, is not
acquainted with the facts.
War, then, is always made by a few individuals, under
the systems which have prevailed so long. The fact is,
that if the great mass of the men and women in Germany
and Russia and Austria and Japan were left to decide
these things, there would be no more war. It was only
a little while ago that I received a letter from a man in
the trenches in the present war, in which he described his
experience and told about the good times that they had
during certain intermissions, when the Frenchmen and
Germans and English would sometimes come out of the
trenches and play football together and enjoy each other's
company; and he spoke of the horror of it all, because,
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he said, not one of these individuals wanted to kill any-
body else. But finally their commanding officers forbade
them to have any more social intercourse, because this
acquaintance was detrimental to the pursuits of war. The
officers realized that the more we know about each other,
the less likely we are to kill each other.
My small boy, seven years old, one morning at the
breakfast table, ventured this brilliant remark. He said,
"Father, why don't those people get acquainted and stop
fighting?"
When people get acquainted, they will stop fighting.
When they awaken to the facts, and understand how they
are being played with, how they are being killed as the
sport of a few individuals, as we already understand
about it in the United States, there will be such a tre-
mendous pressure of public opinion against war that it
will be impossible for a few individuals to take into their
own hands the question of whether there shall be war.
You and I shall decide whether there shall be any warfare.
That will be a method of decision that will take time, will
it not? That is one of the virtues of the method, that it
will take time, because we need time to consider, and the
more time we take to consider, the less likely we are to
fight. And when that good time comes in this country,
and in all countries, the voice of all the women will be
heard, for the women, after all, are those who suffer most
severely in every war.
Another one of the fallacies that we shall point out, is
the argument that a navy is necessary for the promotion
of the commercial interests of any country; that trade
follows the flag, and that we must have a big navy if we
are to make money. If you will read Doctor Jordan's
book, "War and Waste," or some of the other books on
this subject, you will find a vast body of statistics, the
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The Fallacies of War
net result of which is, that those nations which have spent
the greatest amount on war are the ones which carry the
smallest amount, per capita, of the world's commerce.
When we had no navy at all, twenty years ago, we car-
ried eighty per cent of our commerce in our own bot-
toms, and now we carry only eleven or twelve per cent.
Trade does not follow the flag nor the navy ; it follows
the laws of trade and nothing else ; and it is a vain expec-
tation that we can attain material prosperity through
spending our money on warships. What we need is, not
more warships, but more ships of peace to carry the
commerce of the world.
Sometime, if you like, you may take pleasure in figur-
ing out about how much England pays for her commerce,
assuming that her navy is maintained in the interest of
her trade. You will find that it is about fifty per cent of
all she gets ; that the entire trade of her colonies is not
sufficient to justify her navy. As a matter of fact, strictly
speaking and getting down to the very bottom of the
whole question, we find that what war means, com-
mercially, is no advantage at all ; the only thing that war
can possibly mean from a commercial standpoint is that
a nation goes forth to destroy its own markets. That is
all it means. England is at present destroying her mar-
kets in Germany, and Germany is destroying her markets
in England and PVance ; Russia is destroying her markets
in Turkey. So far as it can possibly do it, by every ex-
penditure of energy and sacrifice, each nation is making it
almost impossible for the other nations to trade with it
for many years to come. War is the destruction of our
own markets, and of our system of credit upon which
the trade of the world depends.
I cannot dwell on that any longer, but will pass quickly
to another of the fallacies of war, and one about which
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we must educate the next generation, and that is, that war
is ever necessary to settle controversies. It gives rise to
new controversies ; but so far as concerns the contro-
versies which are supposed to cause any particular war
are concerned, they must be settled by arbitration after
the war is over ; so that the only question is whether you
shall arbitrate your differences before or after you fight.
You are going to arbitrate them anyway.
That is the situation in Europe to-day. As a matter
of fact, war cannot settle differences; it never in itself
achieves any permanent settlement. Many people believe
that we should not rush into Mexico with our army in
order to settle international problems in that country, and
in fact it would have been ridiculous ; we could never
have settled them in that way. Only last summer the
nations of Europe were laughing at our policy of "watch-
ful waiting." Is Europe laughing now? If the nations
of Europe last summer had pursued the "watchful wait-
ing" policy, there would be no war in Europe now. (Ap-
plause.)
As a matter of fact, we could have done nothing but
stir up further strife in Mexico, and continued warfare.
As some German general has said, you can do a great
many things with bayonets, but you cannot sit on them.
The last of the fallacies that I shall speak of to you, is
the idea that we can safeguard peace by preparing for
war ; and that, mind you, is one of the strongest and most
pernicious arguments used by those who are in favor of
larger armies and navies, because it gets hold of the very
people who are sincerely desirous of perpetuating peace
among men. The idea that you are somehow going to
get peace by preparations for war, is absurd on the face
of it. The way to get anything is, not to prepare for
exactly the opposite, for, in the long run, we get about
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The Fallacies of War
what we prepare for; and so preparation for war is the
surest means of getting war. Where there are no forts
and battleships, no guns and no soldiers, there is no war.
No king or emperor or president or congress can possibly
bring a sudden war upon the people unless the ammuni-
tion is all piled up ready for war. We get what we are
prepared for.
I had a letter recently from the Navy League of Amer-
ica asking me to aid them in their campaign for a larger
navy, and among the thirty-five or forty fallacious argu-
ments they presented was one saying that the reason why
the Spanish war was so successful was because we were
prepared for it. As a matter of fact, the reason why we
had the Spanish war was because we were prepared for
war and Spain was not. The reason that the jingo mem-
bers of Congress were able to stir up sufficient trouble to
drag us into war, was because they knew the navy was
ready; and yet, at that ver}^ time, Spain, through our
own minister, had agreed to arbitrate all the differences
between us, including the sinking of the Maine. But we
were prepared for that war, and so we got it. The
smaller our navy, the smaller our likelihood of being
drawn into war..
Mr. Roosevelt says that a proper armament is the
surest guarantee of peace. The first question is. What
is a "proper armament"? It is only fifteen or twenty
years ago that a proper armament, so far as the navy is
concerned, cost the United States Government from ten
to twenty million dollars a year. A year or two ago it
had risen to a hundred and twenty million, and now it is
a hundred and forty-four million ; and yet the Navy
League is demanding that we spend next year a hundred
and sixty million for a '^proper armament" to safeguard
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
peace. There is no end to their demands for a "proper
armament."
That whole argument is fallacious on the face of it,
because there is only one way in which any nation can
guarantee peace through armament, and that is by getting
an armament so much larger than any possible combina-
tion that it cannot be attacked. But how can more than
one nation on the face of the globe have that kind of a
guarantee? Consequently there is a mad rush, in which
the devastating expenditures of one nation are merely an
incentive for every other nation to do the same. And so it
goes around the world, and there can be no end until we
insist upon the fallacy of the assumption that any 'army
is a guarantee of peace.
We have spoken of the long line between Canada and
America. That boundary line is a tremendous argument.
The most heavily fortified line you can find anywhere is
that between France and Germany, or Germany and
Russia, and right there, where you have the most tre-
mendous armaments, is right where you have the greatest
war, while for a hundred years the four thousand miles
of boundary between Canada and the United States has
been, by agreement, without a soldier, without a gun, and
without a war. That boundary line is four thousand
miles of argument against armaments.
In closing, I want to say that it seems to me that the
United States has now a supremely important and stra-
tegic position in regard to the welfare of the world. And
the United States may, through all of its people, so act
and continue to act in the present crisis, that the time will
come when the great peace prize which hitherto has been
given only to individuals or societies, might properly be
given to the United States of America ; because the United
States can act throughout this controversy in such a way
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The Fallacies of War
as to make known in strong and far-reaching language
that all may understand, that the people of this country
stand for the beating of swords into ploughshares to the
end that mankind shall no longer be crucified upon the
cross of war, and that the time has come when we shall
abandon the fallacious idea that in time of peace we
should prepare for war, and in its place — mark you this —
in its place let us insist, individually and in our every-day
capacity, whether in groups like this, or as individuals,
that the time has come for this nation to declare, as a
nation, through all its people, with determination and
fortitude and sacrifice, and a dauntless energy equal to
that which men have put forth in warfare, and in the
same spirit of sacrifice and determination, that now, at
last, the time has come when we, as a nation, shall stand
for the doctrine that, in time of war we must prepare
for peace.
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Chapter XIII.
MORE WAR FALLACIES
BY DAVID STARR JORDAN.
Doctor Foster has crowded much truth and good sense
into his address, and in the time that I have to speak
I want to touch again on some of the points of which he
has spoken.
The maxim that in time of peace we should prepare
for war, does not go back to Washington. Washington
quoted that saying; but he also said that an overgrown
army is one of the greatest dangers to liberty, and espe-
cially republican liberty. What he would have called an
overgrown army was one costing a hundred thousand
dollars a year, not two hundred and ninety million as at
present. The maxim, *Tn time of peace prepare for war,"
goes back to Machiavelli, and he was the apostle of a
mean opportunism; that is, he believed in taking advan-
tage of other nations when you had a chance.
But it didn't start with him. ^sop tells a story that
some one saw a wild boar sharpening his tusks, and when
asked why, he replied, "In time of peace I prepare for
war" ; and so Edward Everett Hale declares that this
maxim goes back to an old hog.
The question of what is a proper navy and army is
one that keeps coming up and is never answered. It is
always ten per cent greater than last year. Some years
ago our navy sailed around the world to make an im-
pression. The impression wasn't altogether a good one,
although the officers and men were on their good behavior.
But that was a small navy compared with what we have
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More War Fallacies
now, or compared with what the other nations had. The
others are all going to ruin now ; so ours is, or soon will
be, stronger than any other. At any rate, no one can
show that any other is stronger, because if any of them
ventured out they would be destroyed.
We like to have a good-sized navy because it is good
for display and it gives us a comfortable feeling of being
well dressed as a nation, and a young nation likes that
sort of thing. William Penn, when he was young, wore
a sword, and somebody remonstrated with Fox; but he
said, "Let him wear it as long as he enjoys it; he will
outgrow it by and by." So the nation will outgrow its
navy after a while. Some of the most sincere men in
the country are among the naval officers, but they are
not the ones that talk. What we don't want is to be ad-
vised by retired officers who have nothing to think of but
how to get a bigger navy; and we don't want to be ad-
vised by the Navy League, when the president of that
league is the president of the nickel trust and a son-in-law
of Mr. Morgan, is one of the officers, because all these
big manufacturing interests belong to the New York
system. We don't know just how far this is true, but
we don't like to be advised by these agencies, nor by any
other men connected with that system. At least two of
them have been secretaries of the navy in times past, and
they were supposed to know how much they ought to buy
because they were agents and buying for themselves.
We are not sure of any of these propositions except as
we see the names on the letter heading of the Navy
League ; but we know that Krupp, in Germany, has backed
many German navy leagues, and it may be that they were
partly responsible for the war. That is their business.
They were making a profit during times of peace, and
those profits have now risen to ten or fifteen million dol-
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
lars a day, and you can send out with that amount a
great many agents to form leagues ; you can hire many
admirals and generals in your service. In England the
late Secretary of the Navy did quit the service of the
Government and go into the service of the armament
companies themselves. It is a delicate question when the
men who were previously buying from these establish-
ments become their agents.
So there are some we don't want advice from ; and, for
one, I don't want to take advice from any navy league
whatever until I know that it represents, as the Navy
League does not, the opinion of the best men in the navy.
I went over to Germany thirty-four years ago on a
North-German Lloyd steamer. The company was young
then, and the officers on that steamer treated the pas-
sengers as though they were Alsatian peasants or recruits,
and I resolved that I would never go on the North-Ger-
man Lloyd again. I have occasion to change my mind
since and have traveled something like thirty thousand
miles on these steamers; but now they have learned that
it pays to give attention to every little matter. They do
not drop the passengers' baggage into the Bay of Naples
any more and refuse to pick it up. They don't order the
passengers around as though they were recruits, but make
them feel as though they were guests of the company.
They treat the passengers and shippers with courtesy, and
the North-German Lloyd has risen to be the second larg-
est shipping company in the world; the largest is the
Hamburg-American. That does not count combines such
as Morgans.
I inquired what profits the North-German Lloyd was
making. It has extended its trade to the United States,
and the rest was mainly with Great Britain and the
British possessions. Some people have said that the
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More War Fallacies
British have brought the war on because they were
jealous of this company; but that isn't true, because
nobody ever heard of an Englishman that envied anybody
or anything whatever, and another reason is that England
never put a single protective tariff or tax against the
German steamers. If they had been jealous they would
have done that.
Now the North-German Lloyd was making a certain
amount of clear profit, and the Hamburg- American also,
as well as the smaller German companies ; and adding
these all together, I found that the profit from the whole
German commerce overseas amounted to $45,000,000
clear profit per year; and the navy that was intended to
protect this commerce was costing Germany $139,000,000
a year. That was what it cost to protect this $45,000,000.
In other words, the rate of insurance was three hundred
per cent; and it didn't insure. When those men that
formed the little military clique around Berlin brought
on the war, this insurance was gone. The North-German
Lloyd and the others thought they could prevent war, but
the ultimatum was issued, and they couldn't meet the
problem face to face. You know what an ultimatum is.
It is a request to decide over night whether you will be
swallowed whole at once or masticated the next day.
The small nation gets gobbled, in either case, as Servia
and Belgium have found out.
But we are not to be anti-German, because this spirit
does not really represent the Germans.
We have been told that our navy is charged with the
duty of protecting our coasts ; but no nation could attack
us without going to New York to borrow the money, and
they couldn't get it. When New York stopped lending
money to the Japanese, the Japanese war stopped. Banker
Schiff wouldn't lend any more money, and they couldn't
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
get any in Europe. Their principal general said he could
hold his army together for about four weeks, and after
that they would have to disband right there in Manchuria.
So that is why there was peace. Russia could have beaten
Japan by simply keeping out of reach until the Japanese
were worn out. When the war was over, Japan's debt
was so heavy that she has not been able to borrow a
dollar since.
Russia owed seven thousand million ; how much Russia
owes France on account of this present war, we cannot
tell until this war is over.
President Foster has said some things so important
that I want to make you think of them a second time.
I don't believe that the settlement of this war is going
to be instantaneous. We may see it stopped, but war
settles nothing; it is what is done afterward that deter-
mines what comes of the war. Now, we are a sort of
overflow meeting of Europe, but we have a better hall,
and our fathers and mothers had some ideas that were
in advance of most of those in Europe at that time. One
of the best is the idea of equality before the law. An-
other is the idea of holding of a human body as sacred ;
that only in the direst extremity can a nation take a hu-
man being and make a rampart of him. In many of the
battles of Europe, the dead bodies have actually been piled
up to form ramparts, but you can't do that here.
It is all a matter of education, and even in this country
we haven't enough. Some time ago, I was talking to a
German audience in what I regarded as the German lan-
guage, and the Germans seemed to understand. I told
them that their war system had poisoned all their teaching
of history and morals and religion and patriotism; and
they stood for that ; but the next week their Navy League
came with moving pictures of the German ships; that
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More War Fallacies
was their antidote to my remarks. But I had a greater
attendance than I have here. There is a fine body of
people in Germany, who beheve as we do in education,
and who reahze that the people of other nations are
human like ourselves ; and the time must come when the
body of a man or woman or baby shall be as sacred as
any flag. There are people in Germany who believe that.
I had a paper from Germany the other day, marked
"Cordially," and a postcard, on which was written,
"Spring is coming." Sometime we shall hear again from
all these people. They can't write much now, for the
censor is very rigid; he is suspicious of everything that
is written that says anything. But there is a body of
people in Germany who would like to have this thing
brought to an end. And then the letters that come, edged
with black ! One of my friends sent me, the other day,
a letter that his son had written from Poland, just before
he died for his country, and that letter was touching in
the extreme ; and when we criticize and disapprove of
the attack of Servia or Belgium, we must remember that
the people over there are just as helpless in this matter
as we are. Our place is to bind up the wounds and make
friends, as we have done in Belgium.
One of the men that we can be proudest of, that has
helped to save five million Belgians, is a California man
and a graduate of Stanford and the first man to enter our
halls, Herbert Clark Hoover.
I once heard the president of one of our Eastern uni-
versities, addressing a body of teachers, tell them what to
be proud of, and there is nothing for us to be prouder
of than our Canadian border. But this professor said
that we should be proud of our four foreign wars be-
cause we were victorious in every one. That was rather
parallyzing. The war with England wasn't a foreign war,
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
although the next one was. If we were victorious, that
fact has escaped all the histories. I supposed that the
war with Mexico had long been a source of shame, and
in the war with Spain I thought that Cervera got most
of the laurels. We could have had anything from Spain
that we were entitled to, without shedding a drop of
American blood; so we lost that war. University presi-
dents like Mr. Foster and myself and this man from the
East, ought to know about these things and teach what
is true. The Civil War was unavoidable on account of
the temper of the times ; but if we had paid ten thousand
dollars apiece for every slave and given each one a farm,
it would have been cheaper than killing the people of the
South. But there were no railroads in those days, no
connection between North and South and there is now.
The important thing is to get acquainted. Charles Lamb
once said, of a certain man, *T hate that fellow." He
was asked, "Do you know him?" And he answered,
*'Oh, no, I don't know him ; I never could hate anybody
that I knew." There is nothing so costly as hate ; hating
people that you don't know by sight.
I was once talking with a German who had been a
conscript, and he told me that he once went into France
and saw some French conscripts going to maneuvers, and
when the car stopped, one of the young men reached out
and kissed his mother. That surprised the German be-
cause he had been told that every Frenchman was a fiend
who was trying to destroy German homes and who hated
everything that makes family life beautiful; and he
found that this French boy was just like any other boy.
In Nuremburg, we had a hall four times as big as this,
filled with people. Constant, who is the most eloquent
man in France, now that Jaures is dead, made a magnifi-
cent appeal to clasp hands across the Vosges ; and one of
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More War Fallacies
the fine young men of Germany spoke in the same vein,
and we all applauded. But it has been said that the
Bavarians have no influence in Berlin. I remember that
Prince Collier said that if the Kaiser wanted war, he had
only to press the button, and the people of Germany
would have nothing to do with it. I don't believe that the
Kaiser wanted war; he thought that Russia wouldn't
fight, and that he could press the button and get Russia
out of the Balkans without fighting.
Germany has had a practical monopoly of the making
of dyes. There every man is a cog in the industrial ma-
chine, and while he is practically guaranteed a place, he
is also paid very small wages and prevented from rising
very much ; for it is one of the laws of social science that
if you hold people up so they won't fall, you also prevent
them from rising. So over there they can afford to work
for less than anywhere else, and the whole dye business
was transferred to Germany; so we must start this busi-
ness up for ourselves until after the war, when it will
probably go back, because trade always flows in the lines
of least resistance.
War is like a great lava stream. It destroys every-
thing that it touches, spreading out into small streams
running everywhere. In Europe there was built up, on
about nine thousand million dollars worth of gold and
silver, a great credit, and there were about two hundred
thousand miUion dollars of engraved bonds and stocks
for sale in Europe, beside twenty-seven thousand millions
of national debt. There were city bonds, and corpora-
tion bonds, and bonds of all kinds, held by all kinds of
people. There are thousands of people living on the
interest of that money. Now, while the war is on, there
is a kind of exaltation ; they don't count the cost and they
don't know where they are. There are millions of men
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
that ought to be at work, and all that work is stopped.
By and by, these men will come back to find that there
are no jobs. There has already been spent in this war
more than the entire value of all the property in the em-
pire of Russia. Who is going to pay for all this ? Industry
pays for it. Now there is no capital to borrow or loan,
and nobody dares to go into any new business. There are
four great establishments in this country that have abso-
lutely refused to touch any of this trade in armaments.
One is the Dayton Cash Register Company, and there are
three others, and they have all refused because it is
wrong. We can't prevent these sales now ; the time to do
that is when the war is over, and it is going to be very
hard to prohibit these private sales then. The Emperor
of Germany has twelve million dollars worth of stock
invested in the Krupp works, and the kings and the
aristocracy all have stock in the great corporations. Even
here it hasn't always been certain whether the govern-
ment or the system was the stronger.
It has been said that there are three kinds of poor men
in the world: the Lord's poor, the devil's poor, and
paupers. The Lord's poor are those who are in trouble,
like the Belgians. We are helping take care of them, and
selling meal tickets for them, some of them a hundred
meals for a dollar, and some expensive meals at six cents
apiece.
The women of the world are rising to the conception
that every war is against them. They gain nothing, and
they sufrer ; the number who die at home is about sixteen
times as great as the number who die in times of peace.
There is typhoid and dysentery in Servia and dysentery
in Poland. This war is the most infernal thing we know
in history ; it is scourging the whole world.
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Chapter XIV.
PEACE AND SOCIAL PROGRESS
MRS. MAY WRIGHT SEWALL
Mr. President, Ladies, and Gentlemen : I must correct
one statement made by the presiding officer, lest you give
to me an affection that, on a perfectly honest presentation
of my claims, you might withhold. I am only temporarily
of this city; Indianapolis is home. While I like to have
other people hurrah for Hoosierdom, I like to hurrah for
California. It is better to hurrah for one another than
for ourselves.
I have been much interested in the opening remarks
of our president, and find myself perfectly sympathetic
with the ideas not only directly expressed, but implied ;
for I infer from what he has said, that Bishop Bell still
has faith in the two or three that are gathered together
under the banner of any progressive hope. Now, that is
the banner under which we are assembled, and one that
has long been flaunting to the breezes of the world.
Again, in the announcement of plans, there is just one
sentence to which I wish to object, in order to give my
full sympathy to the plans. It seemed as if they were
being particularly made for people this side of the Rocky
Mountains. Now, there is just one thing in this world
that I want to crush. I do not wish to crush any people,
because I wish to incorporate within myself the spirit of
every nation in the world; but I would like to crush the
Rocky Mountains as a boundary between sections of our
common country. I do not wish to crush that mighty
range itself, for I enjoy its beauty too well as I travel
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
back and forth ; I do not wish to crush any of its capacity
for giving health and weakh and high aspiration to the
artist and poet ; I only wish to crush what their presence
represented during a time when the science and the skill
of man had not conquered the problems of transportation
and the luxuries of travel that we now enjoy. There was
a period when that physical feature was, to a certain
extent, a cause for there having been a spiritual barrier.
That excuse no longer remains. Therefore, I am eager
always to have everything that is fine and splendid on
this side of the Rocky Mountains, scale the peaks obliv-
ious of their existence ; and everything that is good on the
other side of the Rocky Mountains, scale the peaks com-
ing westward, also ignoring their existence.
"Social Progress and War" is my subject. It could be
summed up in a sentence, but I am not the kind of
speaker who proposes to relieve you in that way. I might
say that the one thing that destroys always, in propor-
tion as it itself exists, the one thing that destroys social
progress, is war ; and yet, as there is another view to take
of that, which I will touch upon later, I do not wish to
commence with a sentence that will sum up all that I can
say. I will say that, during all of my mature life, I have
acknowledged the preparation for it which I received
under the influence of those wonderful people whom we
now speak of as Garrisonian Abolitionists. With them,
social progress began among the American people. It
didn't have its first roots there. Nothing, of course, so
young as that would be sufficiently well rooted to earn
veneration. For those initiative efforts were derived
from efforts of a similar character across the sea, and
from the great principles which first inspired the settle-
ment of our colonies. But there was, as you all know,
at that period, a tremendous awakening in regard to
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Peace and Social Progress
freedom, and expansion of the idea of what American
freedom should be and the message that it should carry-
to the world, and of the dimensions of the world to which
that message should be carried.
Then, all these movements that we now see growing
into some kind of maturity, were beginning in various
lines of what we call social progress, manifesting them-
selves in these organizations, local at first, and then
growing into those wider and more inclusive organiza-
tions which ignore boundaries, just as I want the Rocky
Mountains ignored. This movement first manifested it-
self, so far as women were concerned, in a group move-
ment for woman's political liberty, the tocsin for which
had been rung before I was in my cradle, and which made
a new world for me to be cradled in and grow up in.
Then there were these other movements, ignoring political
boundaries that had divided men quite as much as reli-
gious boundaries had divided women, and bring together
the unlike as well as the like.
Now, from my point of view, social progress has been
accelerated almost in direct proportion to the application
of the principle of co-operation to people who are unlike
each other. So long as people co-operate with one an-
other only to the degree that they share opinions, only to
the degree that they belong to the same religious persua-
sion or the same sectarian group, or belong to the same
social caste, having the same bank accounts and following
about the same fashions, and have enjoyed relatively the
same privileges and suffered from the same limitations :
while co-operation was included within such lines, social
progress was impossible, for that depends upon leaping
over the lines always.
We must first realize what had been accomplished be-
fore this tremendous tragedy from which we are all
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suffering to the degree that we enter into the world's life,
to that degree we consciously suffer every day. If there
is any one here who is not suffering from this war, I want
him or her to know that it is because a certain portion
of his mental or spiritual faculty is paralyzed, and he
hasn't been awakened to his relationship to the peoples
involved in the war.
Our social progress, even within the definition that I
have indicated, that it should mean the co-operation of the
unlike, began only very recently, and I shall be modest
enough, gentlemen, not to undertake to measure your
progress. I shall leave that for men to state; you might
think that I understated it, and I certainly do not wish
to wrong my brothers. But I am ready to state, in
regard to the social progress that has been conceived,
manifested, and officered by women, and, so far as that
is concerned, international co-operation among women,
except for the few illuminated souls who, in the early
years of the nineteenth century, contemplated it, there
was no international co-operation among women prior to
the year 1887. In that year there began preparations for
a festival in our country to celebrate what had already
been accomplished in the direction of social progress, as
social progress had up to that time been conceived by
women. Looking about over the world, we found
that the same avenues for expressing the desire for the
advancement of social progress had been opened in seven
other countries beside the United States, but only in seven
others. Now, none of us had thought very much about
international co-operation. We had, naturally enough,
been occupied with thinking about national co-operation
in our big country. National co-operation is a very sig-
nificant phrase, and it means the co-operation of people
separated in national origins as much as the population
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Peace and Social Progress
of European countries, the co-operation of people whose
homes are as distant from one another as those of the
large majority of European nations ; so it was such a
big thing that it is no wonder that our imagination had
not set for its task international co-operation.
But when it was discovered that there were feeble
efforts to bring the unlike together in our country, and
that these feeble efforts were met every time by preju-
dices arising from the only root for prejudice which I
know, ignorance of one another, and that social progress
was impeded by this, then there were some people who
saw that the progress of the world depends upon know-
ing the person unlike myself. Therefore, this enterprise
of getting acquainted with people unlike yourself, and
almost compelling people who were unlike one another to
come so nearly together that they were forced to revise
their opinions of one another, so far as their opinions
were caused by prejudice based on ignorance — for igno-
rance is a very sandy foundation. All it needs is a tiny
trembling of investigation, a tiny trembling that can be
applied by knowledge, and that foundation crumbles.
I wish I could trace for you the experience the women
had in trying to bridge chasms between nation and na-
tion, and between race and race, to co-operate with people
of different nations and races; but the story, measured
by the time, is much too long, or as measured by struggle
and achievement, to tell you this morning. I can only say
that, beginning with a hope and desire for international
co-operation, and with a desire also on the part of many
fine women in whom the wish had not blossomed into a
hope, there was then only our own country which had
a group of women who believed that it could be done.
We believed that it would be possible for American
women and English women at least to forget all the
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false ideas about one another that had been inculcated
in the school histories that they had studied as children,
and all the prejudices of the period of time stretching
from the Revolutionary War and that we could really
get acquainted with one another as neighbors and friends.
I claim for that small group no superiority over others
who did not share our hope. I attribute our faith to the
fact that we. had been brought up in families who had
studied their own history well enough to make it impos-
sible for them to hide from their children the fact that,
when the colonies were settled in New England by the
pure English race, the finest thing about the pure English
race was that it had been greatly mixed. Some of us
were conscious of the fact, not merely that our blood was
mixed, but we had a curiosity about our national ancestry,
and a desire to get acquainted with our national ancestry
through the nations that had contributed to our lives ; and
we found that there was nothing to be ashamed of in any
of the nations. Our personal pride was fed by what we
learned about them ; but at the same time our personal
affections were chilled by the mistakes we learned of
that had been made by them all.
Working along these lines, from that little group nom-
inally of one nationality but actually of many, we have
come to be a body of seven million women of twenty-six
well-organized national groups. These twenty-six well-
organized national groups are continuing to endeavor to
get acquainted with one another, and have also expanded
their endeavor into lines of actual social service that are
the same in all countries, and they include, beginning
with the one for which I stand before you this morning,
an effort to achieve peace among the nations, to achieve
the displacement of war as a method of settling differ-
ences by a method of international arbitration. This was
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Peace and Social Progress
voted by the women representing nine nations as far back
as 1899, representing three milhon women, and it was the
first propaganda in which we endeavored to co-operate.
At the present time, our propaganda covers several
subjects. One is, and I think perhaps it is the greatest
one to achieve for our respective countries and through-
out the world, that there shall be the same personal ideal
of personal chastity for men as for women, the achieve-
ment of a common moral standard for both sexes so far
as personal purity is concerned.
The next great line along which we have attempted to
co-operate, was in striving, not necessarily for suffrage,
for we found that under monarchical governments as
well as under democratic governments there was a great
difference between the rights and privileges of men and
women, but to achieve for both sexes, in all parts of the
world, the same position before the law, the same respon-
sibility for civic progress. We know that, for a republic,
the ballot is the best instrument; but it may be different
in different countries.
We found that all our work would be greatly improved
by the addition of another idea, and that was international
education ; and so we undertook to foster the efforts made
in ev —y country to gather groups of girls as well as boys
and h ve them exchanged between countries so that they
might be educated in other countries, that groups from
other countries might come to us, and groups from our
country go to other countries for their advanced educa-
tion. Also this advanced education was to be furthered
by the definite exchange of literature bearing upon our
social and civic conditions, with corresponding literature
of other countries.
I think I have indicated enough of our work to give
an idea of our desires in regard to social progress, and
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
I think I have said nothing that is not included in your
own scheme. Doctor Jordan has presented to you the
scientific reasons against drinking. Women do not wait
until they get scientific proof ; practical experience of the
effect of drunkenness on men and the horror of it among
women, has long ago convinced them of the evil of that.
Of course, there are many tributaries of all this work
that will subdivide into a thousand branches. But if we
could achieve a world where men are as chaste in their
personal habits as in their ideals they have thought women
should be, and where women shall be as intelligent and
as energetically active as in their ideals they have thought
men should be; where the practice of temperance should
be universal for both sexes ; and where there was a desire
to leap national boundaries and erase the lines that have
been drawn by prejudice, and bridge the chasms that have
been more deeply digged by increasing prejudice and
ignorance: could we achieve a world in which we had
such men and women, I fancy you know without my
saying it, that it would all necessarily have to be accom-
plished under conditions of peace. You know that
every fight to achieve these forms of individual improve-
ment, and the application of the efforts of the improved
individual to society in every form, would necessarily be,
everywhere, helped by conditions of peace, and blocked
by war.
Now we have had a new revelation of what war can
do as the enemy of social progress. All the nations that
are involved in the war in Europe at the present, that is,
all but two of them, have strong national councils of
women who are the peers of our own women, peers of the
women of the British council and of the French council in
desire and in their native ability and their grasp of the
problems which we discussed. All of them, the women
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Peace and Social Progress
of Servia and of Austria, the best women of both of these
countries, were working through their national councils
for precisely the same social ideals, the same lifting of
the moral standard for the individual and the community.
Japan and Turkey and Russia are the only nations in-
volved in the war in which women are not co-operating
in this great international movement; and even in every
one of these countries there are, though I am sure it will
be news to some of you, in every one of these countries
there is a little group of richly endowed women, native
Russian women in Russia, native Turkish women in
Turkey, and native Japanese women in Japan, who have
the same ideals and who have come together for the
purpose of co-operating with the international movement.
And now has come the war, and these countries are
all involved in the war. All. In the meantime, what
becomes of the work that was being carried on? Well,
as it Is a law of physics, I believe, that two bodies cannot
occupy the same space at the same time, so it is a cor-
responding law of spiritual life that one soul cannot be
preoccupied and devoted to two opposite lines of en-
deavor at the same time. It is impossible. What are the
women of these countries doing? I know. I can give
you the very latest reports, because within the last ten days
I have received in the mail letters from eighty-five of my
associates who have been answering invitations to attend
this conference of women workers which is to be held in
this building in July. These women all say the same
things : How they want to come, how eager they are to
help by giving their names for the foreign section of the
advisory board, and in every way possible. But how can
they come? One woman, in giving her answer, tells in
a larger way the conditions that restrain her movements ;
but they all tell exactly the same story in different ways.
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i>'
One, the president of the Austrian council of women,
one of the noblest women it has ever been my pleasure to
co-operate with, says : *'How can I come ? You are in a
big, neutral country ; you ought to be doing what you are
doing, laying the foundations for peace and a clearer
understanding of war which shall make war impossible
in the future among civilized communities. But what can
I do ? My only son is now at last in the field with the last
reserves called out for Austria; and before that, as you
know, my fourteen grandsons and nephews had been
scattered over the battlefields of Belgium and Poland
and France and Russia. What must I do? I must do
what I am doing and what you would have to do in my
place. I am trying to feed the hungry at home, and care
for those returned to us from the front. I am trying to
stimulate the courage and faith of the women, and they
are so courageous. I am trying to stimulate them to have
courage to stand by their posts as nurses and workers in
every field where no men are left to work."
Well, it would seem — would it not? — as if social prog-
ress had been rather blocked by the war in Austria.
It has been blocked in the same way everywhere, and
we know that the fruits of social progress, the fruits of
civilization, architecture and all forms of art, education
and political advance, that have taken generations of
toilsome, aspiring endeavor to achieve, have been swept
away in eight months, as fire sweeps away paper. That
is what war does, not only for the work itself, but for the
fruit of work; and therefore it seems to me that every
sane man and every sane woman in the world must know
that the task of to-day is to destroy war. (Applause.)
Now, how can war be destroyed? Not by war. No,
my dear friends ; if there is a group in the world upon
whose minds I desire to impress that fact, it is upon a
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Peace and Social Progress
group of Californians. I wish I could impress it upon
every one's mind. I wish I could make the Kaiser and
all the great men, I wish I could get to them the clear
perception of my humble mind, that prosperity for one
nation can never come by crushing another. It is impos-
sible, for instance, that the United States should ever go
forward to the achievement of its ideals by crushing
Japan or any other island of the sea. Nor can Japan, that
young and generous empire, go forward to its success by
crushing or curbing the United States. Can't we learn
the lesson? Must the nations go on through coming cen-
turies slaughtering one another, thinking that thereby, na-
tions are to gain? Is that what we have studied history
for? We have never read of any ultimate, final achieve-
ment of glory or success as the fruit of a war; never.
No such thing can be proved by history.
I myself believe so fully in the evolutionary method
of accomplishing everything, because I have seen that that
is the method in everything that I have ever seen grow.
I have never seen an instantaneous growth of anything;
but I have seen everything, in fields and gardens, and in
the generations of men, developing through slow and
toilsome growth, and I see that when this growth be-
comes conscious, as it does in man alone, this conscious-
ness can be appealed to to co-operate deliberately with
the law of evolutionary progress ; and when this happens,
there is no possibility of checking the advance and no
possibility of thwarting its arrival at the goal.
My dear friends, you know that it is our blessed privi-
lege, a happiness indescribable, and a joy and ecstasy so
warm that I cannot trust myself, even by myself, to say
to myself how blessed a privilege it is, to be a human
being, alive in this day of privilege and opportunity.
Privilege and opportunity for what? Are we here for
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purposes of determined destruction, or are we here for
purposes of determined, intelligent, laborious construc-
tion ? We believe — do we not ? — that co-operation, which
is the law of social progress, includes not only co-opera-
tion with one another along the old lines of like co-operat-
ing with like for ends which both desire, nor only for the
co-operation of the unlike with the unlike for great com-
mon ends that perhaps neither one had at first recognized,
and the co-operation with the unlikes by means to which
all the unlikes equally but differently contribute, accord-
ing to their respective national genius ; but we believe that
this law of the co-operation of the unlike means also the
conscious co-operation of the human with the divine.
I believe that ; I believe that we may appeal to that force
which is within us and which is equally outside of us,
and by this wonderful co-operation with the divine, there
is no goal that humanity's greatest imagination can con-
ceive that its social institutions may not ultimately demon-
strate.
This must be our inevitable faith. But the time as-
signed me is running short, and I have hardly touched
my subject. I must speak to you of that conference
which it is the greatest privilege of my life to have the
opportunity to organize here this year, when the world is
torn by war, when it seemed as if it would be impossible
to organize for permanent peace; and it is not for tem-
porary peace that this conference is convened, not for a
mere Christmas breathing spell in the name of Him who
was cradled in a manger, that the sinews of war may be
strengthened for a greater struggle; not a mere Easter
armistice so that, while the lilies are growing which
symbolize that festival, there shall also grow more re-
serves of food and munitions of war. It is for perma-
nent peace that we meet, the women of the world, with
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everything that that word implies, and they know what
it implies. We, who are the producers of the race, we,
who in our blood have brought forth every soldier that
is shedding his own blood on the field, we, who have
cradled and nursed and reared and taught men, shall
bring forth and cradle and nurse and teach no longer
for war. (Applause.)
This all means that there must be a reorganization of
human society along the same lines and under the im-
pulse of the same principle that all social progress shall
be achieved; that is, under the law of co-operation as
against the law of competition. The law of competition
in industrial life, and the law of competition in social life,
is just as destructive of all that is best as the law of com-
petition on the battlefield of nations. That law must be
abandoned, and the law and method of co-operation must
be adopted. To be adopted anywhere with success, it
must be adopted everywhere with sincerity. That is the
law.
Now, gentlemen and ladies, what does that imply so
far as our daily work is concerned? There are three
things to be done instantly and permanently. We have
just as much to do in this nation as in any other, and we
are called to do it here at this time as no other nation is.
We are called to it by the principles upon which our
Republic nominally founded and which it is gradually
learning to apply to women as well as to men. We are
called to it, not by those ideals of the Republic alone, but
by our own composite, international character as a nation.
I know, as well as anybody, how much effort is being
made by one big nation on each side of the struggle for
our support on the ground that American civilization
depends upon its success. But there can be no victories
in this war for us, because for us this, and every war,
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
is a fraternal war, a civil war for us, though international
for the nations involved in it. Our people are an inter-
nationalized people. By that fact we are called upon to
unite in our determination to make this the last war. We
must revise all our conceptions of patriotism; we must
give up as false and as despicable many of the concep-
tions that we have learned in its holy name. Patriotism
should be the love of one's country, but not limited to
the love of one country or city, even when that city is
San Francisco. It should not be limited to the love of
one State, even when it is a State so rich and fertile as
California. It should not be limited to one's own country.
The moment that patriotism becomes competitive and
conflicting, that moment the seeds of the destruction of
one's country are being sown.
We know that individual vanity is a weakness and a
vice, and arrogance is a weakness, and often not only a
weakness but a crime. We know that boastfulness in the
individual is a vice that may become a scandal ; and then
we inculcate vanity to its highest degree, arrogance to its
highest power, boastfulness in its most audacious utter-
ances, and united we call them patriotism. Such patriot-
ism is a blight upon our national life. This false instruc-
tion, this culture in the organized aggregate of vices that
we despise in the individual, must come to an end.
There is another thing that must be revised besides
patriotism; that is, our religious dimension. It seems
a curious spectacle; and one wonders how the farther
progressed spirits who were once incorporated in the
flesh regard it, as they hear arising from the heads of all
the conflicting armies, five of whom stand as the heads
of great religious divisions, the prayers that are daily
rising to heaven. Francis Joseph is the head of the
Roman section of the church, its secular head; and the
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Peace and Social Progress
Czar, whose mind was once illuminated by the flooding
light which caused him to call the first peace conference,
is the head of the Greek Catholic Church ; and the Kaiser
is the head of one form of Protestant Christianity; and
King George is the head of another; and each of these
invokes all destruction upon the armies of the others;
each one prays to the same God to call down all blessings
upon his own particular army. Would it not be ludicrous,
if it were not so monstrous and so tragic? For compet-
itive patriotism incarnates all the vices that we repudiate
in the individual. How does each of these countries
treat the individual? There is not one country now in
the field that does not classify murder as the worst of
crimes and pronounce upon the murderer the heaviest of
penalties. One weak, isolated individual may not assail
the life of another isolated individual without being
called a murderer; and if he has plotted his deed and
committed it in the dark, he is an assassin, and that is the
only thing more atrocious than a murderer.
Yet organized society, under the leadership and by the
order of the national governments, may, for years, plot
and scheme; and all of them have done it to some extent
and have kept a standing army to teach citizens the law
of blood. They may do this if they are organized, may
assail the lives of other organized nationalities and slay
by the million, and be slaughtered by the hundreds of
thousands. Yet an intelligent child knows that this is
infinitely more murder than the taking of one life by one
individual, just as the long-conceived, laboriously pre-
pared-for crime is worse than the crime of the individual.
(Applause.)
Now, we must shape our morality to this new code.
There is no escape from it for any one who claims to
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
have any knowledge either of the elements of logic or
of the first principles of Christianity.
There is one more thing that we must do, gentlemen
and ladies. We are called to the enormous task of
internationalizing and organizing the human heart. In
all other respects we are already an internationalized
people to a greater extent than any other people. There
is no people that is not internationalized in some degree.
We are already internationalized in our industry, in our
wealth and our property. When prices go up in one
country, they go up in others. We are internationalized
in our culture. We always have been; we should not
have had any culture otherwise. No modern nation
originates its own culture, and we have never yet found
where the cradle of culture was. The first beginnings of
human expression were in psalm and prophecy and story
and history, and gradually science evolved, but we cannot
say where it first began. Our culture is international or
it would be nil. Everything connected with our life at
the present time, our food even, is international. The
most self-satisfied Californian that ever grew up in this
State would be half starved by the monotony of his food
if he ate only what was produced in California, and none
of it had felt the touch of a more artistic hand than the
Californians have yet developed. Even olives and prunes
must be sent abroad to get the culinary blessing of the
French chef before they are good enough to be sold, at
a four-fold price, to the native Californian. Even among
the simple costumes worn here this morning, there is
many a hat and suit that was manufactured outside of
our own country. We are internationalized in every re-
spect, excepting in our aflfections. We have scorned the
emotions, and yet, what is war? War could not be
carried on at all except by the agency of organized
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emotion. Very well, then, it can be defeated only by the
agency of the opposite, equally well-organized emotional
activities of the world. (Applause.)
The only cure for hate is love. The only cure for
organized competition is organized co-operation and
human affection. Upon these basic principles, the Con-
ference of July 4, 5, 6, and 7 will be held. Gentlemen
and ladies, I am here to invite your presence. The meet-
ings will be held somewhere in this civic auditorium,
whether by gathering fragments of our conference in
separate halls where they can hear, or by aggregating
these fragments into the great central hall where they
can see. There will be enough of us to fill and overflow
it. I feel sure that our combined presence in the name of
a great movement and a great idea will not be fruitless.
Women are summoned from all the countries in
Europe that have been so distraught by the war, from the
belligerent and from the neutral, and only financial in-
ability to get here will keep them from coming; and I
cannot believe that the United States will let the women
who desire to come be impeded by financial inability.
This glorious exposition is to be for a year the world's
center; the conferences to be held here will make it the
spiritual center, and every one is co-operating to make it
a success. The countries, one after another, are form-
ing residential centers, residential committees, with some-
one as its chairman, and this stands as a little basis of
union between the local group and the corresponding
nation abroad. And when we get together here, we shall
represent the world's highest hopes, sustained by the
world's supremest faith. We shall gather here in the
high consciousness of the co-operation with divinity for
the perfection of humanity.
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Chapter XV.
PUBLIC UTILITIES AND SOCIAL PROGRESS
BY HON. FRANCIS J. HENEY
I feel as if I owed an apology for coming here to-night
to talk to you at all, because I have not had a single
moment of time in which even to arrange my thoughts
on the subject of this talk. I did expect to prepare some-
thing which could be printed, but unfortunately I am liv-
ing in Los Angeles, and other matters interfered, and at
the last moment it was absolutely impossible. So I am
just going to give you a talk and not a lecture.
I believe that every man who has done public work
can be of more use in explaining and illustrating his argu-
ment by what he has learned from his own work, than
in any other way. I was brought to that conviction
partly by my own experience. In 1906, I was urged by
a few prominent men in this community to try to clean
up the corrupt municipal conditions existing here, and I
consented to undertake the work. At the time I under-
took that work, I had been practicing law for about
twenty-three years. I had received a common-school
education and part of a college education. I had read,
like most lawyers, some general literature. I had started
out at the age of twenty-one, a Jeffersonian Democrat,
believing, as Jefferson did, that the government is a
thing to be feared ; that the people of a country can only
lose their liberty by its being taken away from them by a
second party known as the government, or that the gov-
ernment is something distinct and apart from the mass
of the people and that the government may steal your
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Public Utilities and Social Progress
liberty away from you. It is easy to understand how
Jefferson and the men of his day acquired that idea. Up
to that time there never had been a democracy, in the
national sense. When we speak of a nation, as we do in
these modern days, in the modern sense of the term
"nation," we must realize that there had never been any
such thing as a democracy in the history of the world.
Under the different forms of government which had
existed, the liberty of the people never had been stolen
from them except by those who ruled them.
Great inequality of wealth, whereby an immense pro-
portion of all the wealth of the nation gets into the hands
of a comparatively very few people, thus leaving the mass
of the people in poverty, had always hitherto been brought
about through the power exercised by government. The
king would grant franchises for special privileges to some
of his favorites, or the emperor, or whoever was ruling,
would make large grants of land to his favorites, and thus
start inequality of wealth in that way. These franchises,
which enabled a man, for instance, to do some special
kind of business for the entire nation; these privileges
were always sought from the rulers of the nation who had
the right to give them out. Consequently, it was logical,
perfectly logical, for men to think that the danger to the
people of any country came from the rulers, from the
government.
But in a democracy all that is changed; and in this
democracy we were very careful in preparing the Con-
stitution of the United States to protect ourselves against
an enemy who has never appeared and who never will
appear. We are in no danger of losing our liberty from
the Government, but from the power behind the Govern-
ment. Our danger comes from the fact that under this
form of government the inequality of wealth has been
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
brought about by special privileges, and all these special
privileges are supposed to come from us instead of from
that second party, the Government. I say they are sup-
posed to come from us, because that is purely a supposi-
tion; they never do get these special privileges from us.
They nominate the public officers for us, not dishonest
men, but men whom they know in advance believe that
the way to develop a country is to give it away to the
few, because the few know how to develop it. After they
have nominated honest men with these beliefs, the honest
men give these privileges away, and thus we have great
inequality of wealth brought about in this country more
rapidly than anywhere else in the world.
Of course, there was another reason for the rapidity
with which it occurred, and that was, that about a hun-
dred and fifty years ago a man discovered the principles
of the steam engine. That revolutionized mankind and
started the growth of the modern city. That started
modern manufacturing. That made it possible for one
man or one corporation to have a million men working
for it, and it made it possible for one man or corporation
to control the energy of nature to such an extent that it
might be equivalent to the labor of fifty million men
creating wealth every day. Is it any wonder that wealth
has grown more rapidly in the past twenty-five years than
ever before in the history of the world? It was because
in the last fifty years we have developed the energy of
nature to take the place of the energy of men in creating
wealth, and the energy of nature which we have brought
to this task is so many times greater than the energy of
all the human beings on earth that we are able to do
from a hundred to a thousand times as much work as
ever was done before.
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Public Utilities and Social Progress
These natural resources are only five in number, and
are of such a character as to be easily susceptible of
monopolization : timber, coal, oil, natural gas, and water
power. The first one we learned about was timber, and
in Europe they cut down the forests to run the machinery
with, and during the last hundred years they have been
reforesting. After a while, they found a black rock from
which they could get energy to run the machinery, in
place of getting it from wood, and they called that coal.
Up to 1850, we had not produced in this country more
than about forty-five million tons of coal ; last year we
produced and used over five hundred million tons of coal.
All that vast energy was working for us creating wealth ;
and how much do you think it can do? Well, we speak
of horse-power. Do you know what we mean by horse-
power? We mean what an average draft horse can do in
eight hours. How many men does it take to do the work
of one average draft horse? It takes twelve average men.
How many horse-power do you think we got out of that
coal, the five hundred million tons of coal? And who
owns that coal, and therefore owns that energy? Why,
a few railroads. And that is the first time I have reached
a public utility to-night. About seven or eight railroads
all controlled by seven or eight men, own seventy per
cent of the anthracite coal in the United States, and con-
trol ninety-eight per cent of the anthracite coal.
The production, but not the ownership, of bituminous
coal has been monopolized, and one man has fixed the
price of coal in the United States during the past twenty-
five years. That man held the power in his hands of
making babies freeze to death by raising the price of
coal to the point where the poor couldn't purchase it. He
not only held that power; he exercised that power. He
did make many babies freeze to death, and yet I suppose
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
he is a Christian gentleman. But he has never seen this
economic truth. If he had, perhaps he would stop doing it.
I remember Mr. Baer, the president of the Reading
road, that owns sixty-five per cent of all the anthracite
coal in the United States, said that he was trustee over
it by selection of the Almighty. This man has absolutely
controlled the price of anthracite coal; this man has had
power to levy a tax on you and me whenever he pleased
(and he has pleased to do so very often). The chances
are that you have paid some of that tax in the clothes
you have on, if they were made by the power produced by
that anthracite coal, and they were certainly carried across
the continent by trains run by some of the Reading com-
pany's anthracite coal ; and to that extent you have paid
a part of the tax that went into his pockets. The furni-
ture you are sitting on, the floor under your feet, every-
thing in this building, paid a tax, and a large tax, to the
same individual in the same way.
How did we get into this fix? We were developing;
modern civilization was just coming along. We didn't
look ahead far enough. Some few citizens did see, but
they couldn't convince the rest of us. They didn't con-
vince me. I never saw the light until I saw it from inves-
tigations made behind the closed doors of a grand jury in
this city, in 1906. That is why I say that a man must talk
from his own experience. The political economy that I
learned at the university was worse than nothing ; it had
to be unlearned again. My law studies taught me nothing.
It didn't take these men long to monopolize this coal,
because we only started using it to any considerable ex-
tent in 1850. Then followed oil ; that wasn't discovered
until 1859. Last year California produced, in round num-
bers, a hundred million barrels — more than any nation
on earth produced, except the United States, and more
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Public Utilities and Social Progress
than any other State in the Union. Now, oil is an energy
that the Almighty created according to his divine wisdom,
and it is found as far under the ground, in places, as three
thousand or more feet in depth. Man has learned to
drive pipes down and get it. What does that mean?
Three barrels of oil contain as much energy to run ma-
chinery with as a ton of coal. It is more economical. It
can make furniture; it can make framework for houses,
clothes, women's hats ; it can make anything and every-
thing that mankind can make, practically, because prac-
tically everything now can be made by machinery. But
the machines alone do not and cannot make anything; it
requires energy to run it. Your body is a machine; it
can't make anything except with energy, and you have
to put the fuel into the machine to run it.
Now, we have these natural energies, and oil is one of
them. There is millions upon millions of men's energy
in oil. And that oil belonged to all of us in common.
There is more of it in the United States than anywhere
else on earth. How did we get rid of it? We don't own
it now. John D. Rockefeller owns a considerable portion
of it. How did we get rid of it? By unwise laws; that
is all. Let me put it another way. The greatest of all
the troubles of mankind is poverty. Do you know what
that is the result of? Why, it is brought about by laws.
Our troubles don't come from law-breakers, the big
troubles ; they come from law-makers. I wasted a lot
of time going after law-breakers ; and now, when I say
that it was a waste of time, in a sense, I am called incon-
sistent ; but it isn't inconsistency. It is merely an awaken-
ing. At the time I commenced prosecuting men in San
Francisco, I believed that these few men were the real
cause of the trouble. Now I know that the trouble
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started away back, and that it started with our law-
makers. (Applause.)
And I know that the whole thing is due to a want of
understanding of economic principles by the masses.
When 3'ou tell anybody that you are going to lecture on
political economy, they won't come. In the first place,
they will say, ''What is the use? I couldn't understand
political economy." Why, friends, I can now make polit-
ical economy so plain that even the president of a univer-
sity can understand it.
Let me go on with a little of this. I have been giving
you political economy now for thirty minutes. Let me
give you a little more of it. Only twenty-five years ago,
or thirty at the outside, we discovered how to take hydro-
electric power from falling water. That is the greatest
blessing that ever happened to mankind. We don't begin
to realize its possibilities yet. Let me indicate a little
of it to you. In the United States to-day, in public owner-
ship, we still have at least four hundred million horse-
power of water-power in falling water, over which the
federal government has control. I am giving you the
estimate of the federal authorities whose business it is to
investigate and report upon this matter. You remember
that I told you that it took twelve men to do the work of
one horse-power ; that is, the work that an average draft
horse will do in eight hours. When I tell you that we
own four hundred million horse-power in energy, that we
still own in common and that Rockefeller hasn't got yet,
I mean that we own the energy of twelve times that many
men; that is, four billion eight hundred million men
working eight hours a day forever, because running water
will last forever. Your hydro-electric power will last as
long as the powers of nature continue to operate. So that
you own in common the energy of four billion eight hun-
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dred million average men working eight hours a day
forever.
What of it? If you only know how to put it to work
and make it work for you, it can make all the clothes and
furniture and automobiles and everything else that you
want. You own it ; and you can use it.
Let me show you the other side of the picture now.
There are only these five things with which you can run
machinery : timber, oil, natural gas, coal, and water-
power. Those are all that have been discovered up to
date by mankind. Now, let me own all the timber, oil,
coal, natural gas, and water-power, and I will let you
own everything else in the world, and I will give you all
the timber you want for boards and for furniture and for
any other purpose except fuel, and I will give you all you
want for fuel, if you won't run machinery with it. I will
hold that coal and oil and natural gas and water-power
and timber, and you may have all the gold and silver
mines and the land, the orchards and farms; and do you
know what will happen ? You will all work for me. You
will become industrial slaves, with one alternative: you
can go back a hundred and fifty years in civilization and
stay there, if you wish, and not become slaves to me. But
if you want modern civilization, you will have to pay the
tax to me, whatever I say you shall pay, if I own just
those five things.
Now, why is this true? Because modern civilization
is based on machinery, and machinery won't run unless
you have wood, or coal, or natural gas, or oil, or water-
power to run it. You would have to give up electric
lights and go back to tallow candles. You would have to
give up street cars and steam cars and steam boats. You
would have to go back to the old wagon drawn by horses
and oxen. Why, you couldn't even run a Ford. Can't
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
you see it? Not until you get some of my coal, wood, oil,
natural gas, or water-power. You can't turn iron ore
into steel; and even if you had your rails, you couldn't
run an engine on them until you got some of my coal,
wood, oil, or natural gas. Let me own these five things ;
you can own everything else; and you will all work for
me, and gradually I will take enough away from each
of you until finally you will sink below the poverty line.
That is political economy. Simple, isn't it ?
What has happened to these things? I didn't tell you
what happened to the timber. Four-fifths of the timber
in the United States is in private ownership. They talk
about our great national forests ; but four-fifths of all
the standing timber in the United States is in private
ownership, and two hundred men own eighty per cent of
it. I have forgotten how many millions of acres it is.
There is a recent report upon it by the Secretary of the
Interior. How did these two hundred men get that
timber? By law. Your law-makers are primarily re-
sponsible for it. Why did you lose your coal? Bad
laws ; your law-makers are primarily responsible for the
fact that these railroads own eighty-eight per cent and
control ninety-eight per cent of the coal. How about
the oil? The Standard Oil Company has a monopoly of
that to-day, and is getting a monopoly of that produced in
California. Natural gas? That goes with the oil. How
about your water-power? About nine-tenths of the water-
power developed up to date is in the hands of something
like ten corporations. Three corporations own consid-
erably over sixty per cent of the water-power developed
in the State of California up to date. Do you remember
several years ago that there was a coal strike in England,
and there was a coal strike threatened in the anthracite
region in Pennsylvania? I happened to be in Massa-
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Public Utilities and Social Progress
chiisetts in a shoe manufacturing town; you know we
make two hundred and fifty million pairs of shoes in the
United States by machinery every year. I said to one of
these manufacturers, "What coal do you people use?"
He said, ''We use anthracite coal, and we are walking
the floor because, if the strike takes place in the anthracite
coal regions, every shoe manufacturing plant will have to
close down here in this town of Brockton, and every one
of us will go broke." And that meant that all the banks
in the town would go broke, and that thousands of people
would be thrown out of employment. That meant that
practically every manufacturing plant in the New England
States run by anthracite coal would have to close down.
At the same time the strike was on in England. And
what happened? Lloyd George had to force through
Parliament a minimum wage law, because the owners of
the coal miners refused to compromise with the strikers.
Forty or fifty men owned all the mines in England. These
men were not the Government ; they were private parties.
The king of England didn't exercise or possess anywhere
near the power over the welfare of the people of England
that these forty or fifty men did, because if they refused
to compromise and take out any coal, every steel plant
in England would have closed down, and every mill and
every manufacturing plant would have closed down, and
England's forty million people depend almost entirely
upon manufacturing. So these forty or fifty men had
more power than the king of England.
At that same time, there was a strike threatened in our
anthracite coal fields. I asked, "Who will determine
whether the strike will take place or not?" And they
said, "Why, the owners of the coal fields." I said, "Who
owns the coal fields?" and they stopped to think. They
said, "Eight railroads, and the Reading dominates." Then
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
I said, "In reality, whoever controls the railroads, con-
trols the situation. Who controls the eight railroads?"
"Morgan." He was then alive, and was over in Europe
somewhere on a pleasure trip buying bric-a-brac. And in
the hands of Pierpont Morgan in Europe, thus rested the
welfare of the business men of this country. Why, I
thought we had a democracy here !
Do you see how essential it is to understand something
about political economy, before you can even begin to
know how to vote ? It isn't material whether a man calls
himself a Democrat or a Republican or a Socialist or a
Progressive, or what he calls himself. The material ques-
tion is, How is he going to vote on matters that affect
the creation of inequality of wealth in the country? — and
the monopoly of nature's energy does this on a gigantic
scale.
When I went to work here in San Francisco, in 1906,
Professor John Graham Brooks came out from Harvard
University, where he was Professor of Sociology. He
said to me, "Mr. Heney, don't you think that the pubHc
ownership of public utilities is the only solution for the
graft conditions existing in our large cities?" My reply
was, "I should hate to think so." I was still a Jefferson-
ian Democrat in my beliefs. I had to have it knocked
into me ; I never did get to see it until after I found that
the people of San Francisco couldn't rule ; that, as a mat-
ter of fact, the few men who own the public utilities
could break down our courts, and could absolutely pre-
vent the doing of justice; could scoff at the law; could
do what they pleased ; and then I commenced to see that
there was something that I didn't understand, and finally
the clouds rolled away and I began to see that there is
only one cure, and that John Graham Brooks had named
it : public ownership of public utilities.
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Now, are there any answers to the argument that we
should own the public utilities? One is that we couldn't
run them as efficiently as private owners do. Another
one is that it would cost us more to run them. Another
one is that our government would be more corrupt than
it was before; that men go into office now to steal, and
what would they do if we owned the public utilities?
Then there would be much more to steal. There is noth-
ing in any one of these arguments. I used to think there
was, and made those arguments myself; but there is a
complete answer for every one. But if I was absolutely
positive that we would lose money running them, and
that we could not run them as efficiently, I would still,
nevertheless, be a strong advocate of public ownership
of public utilities. Why? Because, after all, the moral
well-being, as well as the economic welfare of our people,
is the essential thing; and I want to tell you that just as
long as you have private ownership of public utilities, you
are going to have a temptation that will destroy the moral
fiber of some of your most enterprising financiers ; you
are going to have big bankers who would be ashamed to
admit to their children what they do down in the bank;
every time there is an election, you are going to have a
slush fund furnished by some of the biggest men finan-
cially, and some of the most enterprising men in the com-
munity, men who could be and would be good citizens if
you took this temptation away from them. I am not
claiming that I am any better than others; I am not
claiming that if I were in the position of some of these
men that I might not do the same thing; I am not here
for the purpose of telling you how good I am and how
bad they are. I am merely telling you that your system
is wrong, and that your system produces corruption, and
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
will continue to do it as long as you have that system.
(Applause.)
Fifty years ago, Boss Tweed was indicted in New
York City. He never got into the penitentiary; there
was never but one political boss got into the penitentiary
anywhere in the United States, and that one got in by an
accident and a technicality ; he happened to get the worst
of the technicality. It was very unfortunate; they had
planned it that he was never to go, and if it hadn't been
for a slip — one of the judges made a trip East at the
wrong time and so created a technicality — he would still
be out and around here. I would say he would be more
respected and honored than the man who tried to put him
in; but he would certainly be more welcome in some of
the largest banks in the city.
Now, I say that this private ownership of our public
utilities is the cause of the trouble. How did that come
about ? Cities commenced to grow more and more when
we commenced to use machinery and to manufacture
under the modern system, and there was a tendency to
draw men into the cities where employment could be had
working in factories. That grew and grew, and larger
and larger bodies of people got to living together, and as
a result of this form of civilization, quite a number of
things developed as necessary public utilities. I have had
men argue with me that you could make bread a public
utility, and that, therefore, if the street cars are owned
by the public, bakeries ought to be. I am sure the
slaughter houses ought to be so that diseased meat cannot
be sold to the people. Europe does this, and the meat is
inspected by public officials. But pubHc utilities are those
things which are essential to the life of a city, municipal
public utilities, which practically every person in the city
has to use to some extent, and which require a franchise
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to authorize a man to operate the business. It thus be-
comes a special privilege. Bread-making isn't that. But
running a telephone is, because you have to have the spe-
cial privilege of being authorized to run wires along the
streets that belong to the public, or through houses or in
other places that do not belong to you. That privilege is
what distinguishes it.
What is another public utility? Street cars. What is
another ? Lighting by electricity or gas, because you have
to have the privilege of using the public streets in a way
that the general public doesn't use them, for wires and
pipes, etc.
W^hat else? We have lighting, heating, transportation,
water, and telephones. For water, the laying of the pipes
is a special privilege. So you see what the distinction in
these things is, which we call public utilities. Originally
carrying off the sewage in the city was done by private in-
dividuals or corporations, constructing sewers and charg-
ing for the privilege of using them. There was a time
when there were no public schools ; they were all privately
conducted. There was a time when there were no public
jails ; the public paid private people to conduct private
jails, and paid board for the public prisoners put in these
private jails. There was a time when there was no pub-
lic fire department ; when private corporations or asso-
ciations looked after the questions of putting out fires in
the city. Gradually we found out that some things had
to be done by the public, and for the benefit of the entire
public, and so, out of about thirteen public utilities, we
took over seven, and left the other five for private cor-
porations. Wliich seven did we take over? The fire de-
partment and the police department were taken over by
us. In America we have had public schools from the
beginning. England only got public schools in 1876.
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
We have taken over the paving and cleaning of the
streets; individuals used to keep the streets clean. I
can recall when the sprinkling of the streets here was
done by individuals paid by the individual store keepers ;
and one would pay and one wouldn't, and the sprinkler
would sprinkle in front of the store that had paid and
not in front of the one that hadn't, and the dust from
in front of the store that hadn't paid would blow in the
door of the one that had.
So we took over all these departments ; but we only
took over the ones that we couldn't possibly expect to
make any profit out of, and all those that there might be
a profit in, we left to the private corporation to conduct.
How did that come about ? Why, the private corporations
were anxious to have us take over the profitless ones ; no-
body opposed it. We took over the schools, and some of
the private schools did oppose it, but the opposition didn't
amount to much, and private corporations were glad to
let us have the fire department and the police department.
But then when some of us wanted to take over the street
cars and run them, they said, 'Tlold on ; you can't do
that." They tell us that pohticians can't run street cars ;
the people can't do that. They can run a fire department
because that doesn't amount to anything and isn't im-
portant ; what does it matter if a city like San Francisco
does burn up two or three hundred million dollars worth
of property? But the people can't be trusted to run the
street cars ; they should confine themselves to the fire
and police departments, where there is no profit.
Why shouldn't we run a publicly-owned telephone?
We all know that a telephone ought to be a monopoly;
there shouldn't be two different telephone systems. We
didn't know it until we tried, but after we tried it we knew
it; we found that with two in operation, we had to have
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both of them, and so had to pay double. Why not run a
public telephone system ? Why, they tell us, that is a busi-
ness the public can't run. It can run the school depart-
ment; of course, it doesn't require any brains to run a
school department and teach the children, but it takes
brains to run a telephone business and put the wires up.
There is no profit in running schools; they are free. If
there were a profit, they would tell us it was impossible
for us to run the schools ; that politics would get into them
and they would be no good. But if we were going to run
a free telephone system, they wouldn't agree to it, be-
cause there is too much money in the one they are run-
ning, and they don't want to let go. And so, when any
city in the United States has attempted to take over one
of the profit-making utilities, the people have been told
by most of the newspapers in that particular city that it
was all nonsense and dangerous ; that the corrupt poli-
ticians would steal everything. We, here in San Fran-
cisco, listened and believed all that; but finally we tried
one lonesome street-car line on Geary Street, and after
the public got it running it made so much profit that we
were almost afraid to tell ourselves what we were making.
The public operation of it has been opposed by the public
utility owners for years. Every time there was a fight
made to put it through, nine-tenths of the bankers in this
city fought it and furnished money to the political funds
to fight it. Nine-tenths of the members of the Chamber
of Commerce and Board of Trade fought it. Why?
Merely because they had wrong ideas of political econ-
omy. What gave them the wrong ideas ? The ownership
of stock and bonds in public utilities. Cutting coupons
gave them the wrong ideas, and borrowing money from
the bankers who owned the bonds, and having those bank-
ers whisper in their ears that it would kill San Francisco.
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
What has the United Railways been doing for years?
Refusing to extend its Hnes unless they were promised a
franchise for fifty years so that they might fasten their
tentacles upon the public. And did the bankers protest
that this privately owned and atrociously managed public
utility was injuring San Francisco? Not a word; on the
contrary they said that the muckraker who accused these
men of graft and corruption ought to be run out of the
city.
Why, don't you see what private ownership of pubHc
utilities does? It poisons the minds of some of the men
who would otherwise be the most useful men in the com-
munity. Let me show you how. The cities of Europe
have taken over the public utilities, most of them. Like
us, they started with private ownership ; but over twenty-
five years ago they discovered their error, and ever since
they have been taking over the public utilities. Practi-
cally every large city in Europe owns its own street cars.
Well, we have started to do it by getting hold of some
of the street-car lines in San Francisco. We started with
the Geary Street line, and then tried to extend it. When
we were fighting for new bonds to extend these lines, the
San Francisco Chronicle made a bitter opposition fight;
it was getting paid for doing it.
What was the objection to it? The Chronicle said,
"What would have happened if we had had public own-
ership of the street cars, the gas, and the telephone when
Schmitz was mayor of San Francisco and Ruef was po-
litical boss?" I think if anybody can answer that ques-
tion, I am the man, because I spent two years with a
grand jury on that subject. The best way to find out
what would happen is to inquire what did happen. What
did happen? Seventeen out of the eighteen supervisors
making up the Board of Supervisors, or City Council,
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made confessions ; came before the grand jury and con-
fessed to all the crimes they had committed. What had
they done? Accepted bribes. What bribes had they
accepted? Well, they had accepted a bribe from the gas
company. What for? They had been elected on a plat-
form pledging them to make the gas rate seventy-five
cents ; they were paid seven hmidred and fifty dollars
apiece to make the gas rate eighty-five cents. The polit-
ical boss, Ruef, got twenty thousand dollars, and gave
half of it to Schmitz, the mayor, and the other half was
divided up among the supervisors ; seven hundred and
fifty dollars apiece among eighteen of them. That was
for making the gas rate eighty-five cents. What would
have happened if we had had public ownership? Would
the pubHc have bribed the supervisors to raise the price?
Why, it is ridiculous. Why were they bribed to make it
eighty-five cents? That ten cents extra per thousand
feet of gas made an increase to the gas company of about
three hundred thousand dollars a year in income. I have
heard it said this political boss was a friend to the poor;
that he only robbed the rich corporations. The gas com-
pany gave him twenty thousand dollars for doing what?
For making the price of gas eighty-five cents, which gave
the gas company three hundred thousand dollars. Wliere
did that three hundred thousand dollars come from?
Most of it came from the poor, because the rich don't use
gas very much ; they use electricity. But in the modern
cities, the poor use gas for cooking, heating and lighting ;
they are the ones who use most of the gas, and they paid
that extra ten cents, which amounted to three hundred
thousand dollars ; to go into the pockets of whom ? Some
of our biggest bankers. You may get the impression after
a while that I am down on bankers, but I am not. Far
from it. I would like to be in a position to borrow from
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
every bank in the United States. The bankers perform a
very useful service in a community; but I am down on
leaving this temptation where some of our best men, who
are bankers, are put in such a position. I don't want to
save their pockets; I want to save their souls.
You can approach this from either the economic or the
moral standpoint, and the argument is just as strong from
one side as the other. What happened when men were
prosecuted for accepting these bribes? Some of our big-
gest bankers and merchants in the strongest social clubs
of this city, and I was a member of every one of them,
made the defense openly, "Well, of course they did it, but
they had to do it." Had to do what? Had to commit a
felony, had to undermine the foundations of government
by bribing public servants, one of the worst crimes that
can be committed; and they did it "to protect their in-
vestments." Why, four hundred and fifty years before
Christ, a better Christian doctrine than that was taught
by Socrates; after he had been condemned to death he
refused to flee because he would be breaking the laws of
his country and he had been preaching all his life that it
is the duty of the citizen to obey the laws, and so he re-
mained and accepted death. And yet private ownership
of public utilities has brought men to a pass in this coun-
try where our most influential citizens openly defend in
their social clubs the committing of these crimes on the
ground that "a man has to protect his investments." Three
hundred thousand dollars additional income is five per cent
on six million dollars, isn't it? Where were the six mil-
lion dollars of bonds whose fictitious value would be wiped
out over night by a reduction of the gas rate to seventy-
five cents ? They were lying quietly in the banks ; and
the bankers were merely saying that the public should
continue to pay eighty-five cents because they were loan-
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Public Utilities and Social Progress
ing money to the owners of these bonds, and those bonds
wouldn't be worth so much as security if the price of gas
was lowered.
It was the same with the telephone and the street rail-
ways. What else did the supervisors confess ? They had
been bribed by the Home Telephone Company that wanted
a franchise; they got one hundred and twenty thousand
dollars from the Home Telephone Company to grant it
a franchise so that it could come in and compete with the
Pacific States Telephone Company. They got thirty-five
hundred dollars apiece. Now, the Pacific States Tele-
phone Company didn't want that franchise given ; it had
to "protect its investment." It was already in, and its
officers thought they had a right to protect themselves
against competition. So they sent their man down to
give a personal bribe to the individual supervisors, and
he paid them five thousand dollars apiece to vote against
the Home franchise. Thus, they got five thousand dol-
lars in the left hand, and thirty-five hundred dollars in
the right hand, and then they went the way Abe Ruef told
them to go; and now the Home Telephone has sold out
to the Pacific States Telephone Company and the latter
wants to consolidate the two systems. The Chronicle says,
''What would have happened if we had had public owner-
ship at that time?" Would the public have bribed the
supervisors to grant the franchise, and also not to grant
the franchise? Why, nothing would have happened.
The supervisors also accepted a bribe of two hundred
thousand dollars from the street railway company; Ruef
divided one hundred thousand dollars thereof with
Schmitz, the mayor, and divided up the rest among the
supervisors. What would have happened if the city had
owned its own street railways? Would the public have
bribed the supervisors to change from the underground
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
cable to the overhead trolley ? Why, of course not. You
see, under public ownership there would have been no
bribery. I don't believe that Schmitz would have been
elected if we had had public ownership. If we had public
ownership and our bankers and merchants showed the in-
terest that they do in the honest conduct of some parts
of the city government, I think that the public would get
so that it would have some confidence in the recommenda-
tions of the bankers and merchants and the Chamber of
Commerce on the subject of politics. But just as long as
present conditions exist the public will rightfully suspect
them every time they recommend anything. But don't
you see what would happen if the public owned the public
utilities that profit is made from? In order to have a
thriving, progressive town, you would have to have effi-
cient service from the street cars and gas and electricity,
and from the water system and telephone system. With
what result? With the result that every banker who is
interested in seeing the town prosper would be in favor
of good government and efficiency. He wants good gov-
ernment now, but he wants that kind of good government
which will allow the street cars to make all the money
they can, and the other utilities all they can ; and if you
don't permit that, he would rather have bad government,
and will make alliance with the tenderloin in order to
beat you at the polls and elect men who will give them
what they want. That happens over and over again in
every big city in the United States, and once in a while
the people dimly see what the trouble is, and some re-
former stirs them up and they elect a reform ticket, and
the new government isn't in power a month before the
newspapers commence to ridicule it and criticize, because,
back of the newspapers, the public utility corporations are
busy. They work through the biggest advertisers ; and
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Public Utilities and Social Progress
so the public mind is confused in regard to the reform
administration and by the time it has been in two years,
and has been misrepresented every day for two years,
you sweep the reformer out of office and put back the old
machine, and you think you have done your duty as cit-
izens ; and you have acted conscientiously, but, my ! how
stupidly.
But let all the utilities be owned by the public and then
your banker will want to have them honestly and effici-
ently conducted, and he will help you. Will there be
stealing? Why, if a public officer steals, what happens
to him? If a treasurer steals money, he is sent to the
penitentiary ; or a tax collector who steals is punished ;
there is no pubHc excitement about him. It is only when
you get after somebody who has been doing business for
the public utility corporation that there is any excitement.
Let a man steal public funds, and see how every banker
and merchant will want to send him to the penitentiary.
They all joined in wanting to send Abe Ruef to the pen-
itentiary ; every newspaper and banker in town seemed
to be in favor of it up to the time that he made confessions
in open court; and the very next morning thereafter the
Chronicle went over on the other side and commenced
to oppose the prosecution. Why? Because some of the
gentlemen who furnished the bribe money would be in-
dicted, and big business wouldn't tolerate the punishment
of the men who did the bribing; and they didn't tolerate
it, and the prosecution wasn't successful. Finally they
got enough newspapers on their side so that they were
able to confuse the public mind, and then a district attor-
ney was elected who had privately arranged to dismiss
all the indictments and stop the prosecution. There is
only one way to stop corruption of this character in our
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
large cities, and that is by the pubHc ownership of all its
public utilities.
And so we are trying to get public ownership, because
then these men who are doing these things will join with
us to get efficiency, and it is demonstrable that everything
in government that they demand shall be efficiently con-
ducted, is efficiently conducted. Everywhere, even under
corrupt conditions, the fire departments are efficient. New
York City is world famous for the efficiency of its fire
department. Had not the big pipe that brings water into
San Francisco been broken, San Francisco would have
been saved in 1906 by the efficiency of its fire department.
Why was it so efficient when we had such corrupt gov-
ernment? Don't you see that the people who dealt with
Ruef, and joined hands with the tenderloin, and permitted
it to be run wide open in violation of the ordinances, and
bribed the supervisors, these men demanded efficient fire
protection even from Ruef, because they owned the big
buildings ; they owned the fire insurance companies, and
they paid the losses, and so they insisted upon efficiency
in this one particular thing. How about the police de-
partment? Do they want honest policemen everywhere?
No. They don't care about bunco steerers or gambling;
but they want business houses protected against burglary ;
they want the traffic on the streets conducted efficiently
because it interferes with business if it isn't efficiently
done. Do they get it ? Why, of course they get it. Un-
der Tammany, in New York, they have as fine a service
on Fifth Avenue as anywhere on earth, in the way the
traffic is taken care of, and the same police divide up with
the pickpockets who rob on Fifth Avenue between mid-
night and morning. The power back of Tammany is the
Wall Street bankers ; and in every city in the United
States, back of the so-called political machine you will
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find the men who are making money out of the public
utiHties.
So I say, from an economic standpoint, and from the
moral standpoint, both, you must have pubhc ownership
of utilities. Wouldn't you rather lose money on your
street cars and your telephones and your water system
and your electric lighting, than to have your boys and
girls brought up to believe that it is morally right to "pro-
tect an investment" by bribing public servants ?
You cannot break down the moral standards of young
men and women in one direction without weakening the
entire structure in every direction.
I have gone over my hour. If I have started you think-
ing, I have done all that I came here for to-night. Go
home and think it all over, and when you think you have
found some answers to my arguments, drop me a line
and ask me for it, and I will tell you what the answer is.
Because there is an answer. The thing is so plain to me
now that I only wonder why I didn't always see it.
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Chapter XVI.
OUR CITIES AND SOCIAL PROGRESS.
BY DANA W. BARTLETT.
The city has come to stay. Nearly fifty per cent of
all the people are living now in metropolitan areas. Try
as hard as we may to encourage the back-to-the-land
movement, we have very little hope of changing the drift
city-ward. So the main thing to do is to make the city
the very best place possible, to make every city a "city
livable."
I am thinking to-night of the power of environment
upon the life of those who live within the city. I am
thinking more and more of the environment in its relation
to character building, and health, and morals. I used to
talk more about heredity ; but as I have seen, through
years of service in the city, the power of physical condi-
tions as they bear upon the lives of others, I feel like do-
ing all in my power to change those conditions for good.
I have watched the effect of the surroundings upon
the lives of so many ; I have seen them go down so rap-
idly, and it seems to me that if there is any way out of
such conditions, we must find it. We cannot afford to
spoil our cities as we are doing; we must destroy the
slum. Let me give you just a little illustration, which I
ran across in London. You have read of the garden cities
of England, that wonderful movement spreading from
England over the continent. I have visited many of them.
The plan is to buy a large tract of land and move out the
factories from the city, and move the people out, and give
them the finest kind of homes and surroundings ; the finest
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Our Cities and Social Progress
ti'
surroundings that anybody could wish for. Two-thirds
of the land is kept as agricultural land, never to be built
upon, and they allow only ten houses to the acre, so that
it can never become overcrowded. The movement is a
wonderfully interesting and suggestive one, and we hope
that it will spread here.
They took an examination of boys of fourteen years of
age in the slum schools of Liverpool, and in the garden
village of Port Sunlight, where Sunlight soap is manu-
factured, and where the surroundings are splendid ; good
air and good food. They found that the boys in the gar-
den city were six inches taller and weighed thirty pounds
more on the average than the boys in the slum schools of
Liverpool.
You remember during the Boer War, the recruiting of-
ficers went down into the slums of London and Liverpool,
but they found that they could get very few recruits ; they
all fell under the requirements. And England to-day, in
order to get soldiers, is having to take men under the
standard height because the slum has degenerated the
stock. You know why. When we see the drunken women
with their sickly children in their arms, and the fearful
conditions, and realize that the fathers and grandfathers of
these children have lived there, never knowing where the
next meal was to come from, it is evident enough why
they deteriorate.
The London County Council has done a wonderful
work. It started to buy up the slum area. They tore
down the old tenements and built beautiful apartment
houses, and cleared large, open spaces with flowers ; but
they soon discovered that they were not accomplishing
anything, because the people that had previously lived
there moved into some other place and formed a new
slum, and the better class of people moved into these
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
dwellings that were so nice. So then they went out into
the country and bought up large estates, and built homes
for the people. Then, before they tore down the slum
buildings, they said, ''Here we have a beautiful place in
the country, where we will give you cheap car fares."
And in this way they got the people out there and they
are getting rid of the slums, in the great city of London.
Why should we allow people to live in the fearful con-
ditions that they do in this city and in Los Angeles, and
in all the cities of this State. We pay no attention to it.
Yet these people are being degraded by their surround-
ings, when it is for the city itself to see that they are prop-
erly housed. They have learned the lesson across the wa-
ter, and in other places municipalities are attempting to
remedy conditions. Buenos Aires is devoting ten million
dollars to house its people. Ontario is making it possible
for philanthropic companies to issue stock, and the city
itself will guarantee three-fourths of the stock. One of
these companies in Toronto has issued two hundred and
fifty thousand dollars and the city has guaranteed seven
hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which they are now
using to rehabilitate the poorer sections of that city.
We cannot afford to have our people live in the terrible
conditions that they are living in now ; considering the
value as laborers, and as fathers and mothers and cit-
izens, it will pay the city to put money into such an enter-
prise.
We have just had a prize contest for plans for working-
men's houses. There will be seven who will win in this
prize contest. We are hoping to find twenty-five thou-
sand dollars at six per cent with which we can buy the
first unit and construct these model houses for the work-
ing people. We believe that we can build a house of
four rooms and bath, on one-tenth of an acre, and sell it
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Our Cities and Social Progress
to the working man for one thousand dollars at ten dol-
lars a month, and that will make it possible for a two-dol-
lar-a-day man to get a house for himself. We believe in
making a city of homes, not of apartment houses or tene-
ments. We are going to have all about us in every city
better conditions. The great factories can no longer af-
ford to buy land in the richest districts. The Iron Works
in Los Angeles wanted two acres more land, and they
found that this two acres would cost so much that they
could better afford to go out to the garden city of Tor-
rance and buy twenty-five acres, and that is what they
have done. So the factory will move out of the city.
They can build model factories and model homes for
the people outside of the city, and when that town of
Torrance was built, there was a clause put in the charter
that no liquor can ever be sold in that territory. But they
are planning to build a library and a schoolhouse and a
hospital, and in the years to come the thousands who work
in these factories will live in model homes and will have
model surroundings, and will have a chance to become
model men and women, morally and physically.
I think that we can do nothing more important in this
movement for social reform than to give attention to the
housing of the people, and especially of the immigrants
who may come to us in the next few years.
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Chapter XVII.
IS CONFLICT THE PRICE OF SOCIAL
PROGRESS?
BY GUY V. TALBOT.
I shall Speak to you, not with regard to a practical, spe-
cific, social problem, but rather with reference to the
underlying thought which makes necessary the dealing
with specific social problems. It is a fact that every
epoch of human civilization, through advance in social
progress, is due to the thinking of the people. The epochs
of civilization are thought-created epochs, and I want to
discuss with you, for a few minutes, this question that
underlies much of our social activity ; Is conflict the price
of social progress?
Haeckel, the last great exponent of the material theory
of evolution, made this statement in one of his last books.
His meaning is this ; that the epochs of civilization, of
social progress, are a recapitulation or a going over again
of the history of the human embryo from the cell to a
complete living organism.
Two years ago I used to preface all my addresses with
this announcement: I am the father of a pair of twins.
I am still the father of these twins, but the newness has
somewhat worn ofif. But I have noted this, that these
twins and their two brothers, did not arrive at self-con-
sciousness at once ; they were not born self-conscious. By
a process of experience, sometimes hard and bitter, they
arrived at self-consciousness. And the human race,
whether or not it organically reproduces the changes of
the human embryo, does scientifically reproduce the his-
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Conflict and Social Progress
tory of a human being in arriving at self-consciousness.
We are not yet socially self-conscious. Some of us
thought the race had almost arrived at racial conscious-
ness, at a consciousness of human solidarity, when the
whole world was plunged in gloom by the announcement
that the nations of Europe were at war, and then our
theory was shot to pieces. Men were no longer brothers,
but demons being hurled at one another by higher au-
thority. But in spite of the fact, it remains true that
society to-day as never before is coming to social self-
consciousness, more than at any preceding time in the
world's history; we are conscious of brotherhood, and
it has been a long, bitter, hard struggle through which
the race has had to come, even to arrive at the first pale
glimmerings of brotherhood.
In the field of biology, the study of human origins or
of any other physical origins, there is a conflict in the
study of microscopic life ; there is constant conflict. Let
me illustrate it. We have the germ theory of disease,
that is, not a theory but a demonstrated fact. Many dis-
eases are carried by means of bacteria. The function of
the leuccocytes, the white blood corpuscles, is to destroy
the bacteria that find access to the blood through the air
passages or through some cut or otherwise. They are
called the scavengers of the blood, and their function is to
make war upon the foreign forms of life that enter the
human body, the disease-producing germs. And we have
strong bodies, able to withstand the attacks of these ene-
mies just in so far as we have a strong army of white
blood corpuscles in our blood. Our power of withstand-
ing disease depends on the army of leuccocytes in our
blood. Therefore, our physical health is dependent on a
conflict constantly waged in the blood. That means, cer-
tainly, that physical progress of the human organism is
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
dependent somewhat on that conflict waged in the blood
by the natural scavengers of the blood against the enemies
of human health.
It is also a fact that in the study of animal life on this
planet, we find a constant conflict in the animal world,
the weaker being destroyed by the stronger. We call that
the survival of the fittest. In spite of the fact, however,
that the stronger rises on the back of the weaker, there
are to-day living armies of insects, for example, that
have been able to survive; living armies of little animals
that have been able to survive, because of their power of
adaptation. But there is conflict in the physical world
about us. It is true that there have been conflicts between
individuals in the human race ever since Cain killed his
brother, and conflicts between tribes, ever since the herds-
men of Abraham quarreled with the herdsmen of Lot;
and there have been conflicts between races, ever since
Moses led his Israelites out of Egyptian bondage ; and
conflicts between nations ever since the wars between
Persia and Macedonia.
But that doesn't necessarily mean that the progress of
human civiHzation, the social progress of the race, has
been at the price of conflict, for it is a well-known fact
that man, as he develops, differs from the orders below
him, in that he directs consciously his progress toward a
given goal, and as men in the social organism become
socially conscious, and direct that organism toward a
given social goal, no longer then is the price of that
progress the conflict of the various groups in the social
organism. Let us apply this to the governments of the
world.
What is the cause of the colossal conflict being waged
in Europe to-day? Was the throwing of the bomb that
killed the archduke the cause ? That was merely the torch
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Conflict and Social Progress
that set off the conflagration, not the cause. Was it the
violation of Belgium's neutrality? That was not the
cause, though that may have caused England to enter the
conflict.
If you would understand any epoch of human civiliza-
tion, you must understand the dominant thinking of the
people of that particular epoch, and the cause of the Euro-
pean war is to be found in an idea that had become an
obsession of the people of Europe. Let me give you a
development of that idea. The modern scientific revival
began a generation ago with three men : Darwin, Huxley,
and Spencer. They gave to the world the doctrine of the
survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence; the
doctrine that the physically fittest survive in a struggle.
This was taken up by the German philosopher, who died
in a mad house, and developed into a philosophic theory
of human development; the doctrine of the superhuman.
This doctrine of the German philosophers, Nietsche and
Treitschke, developed into a theory of government; and
this was one of the great advances of human thinking,
when this great scientific doctrine was applied first to in-
dividual humans and then to the race ; when it was
taken over by the historian and developed into a theory
of government, the theory that that government is the
fittest to survive which is the strongest physically and
that has the strongest armies. This theory of government
by Treitschke, was taken up by Bernhardi, and by him
developed into a policy of German government, and this
policy became an obsession with the German people, and
not only with them, for they are not different from their
brothers, but of all the civihzed world, that that nation is
the fittest to survive in the struggle which is physically
the strongest. And as the result of that idea, we have
had the mad race of rival armaments, and there will come
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
no peace, no matter how many peace congresses we have,
and so on, until this false doctrine of internationalism is
done away with, and in its stead we have the great inter-
national federation, based on the brotherhood of man,
and not on the conflict of races and nations.
This obsession must give way to a rational and correct
theory of social progress. Applied specifically, is it true
that conflict, and as applied to nations conflict means war,
is it true that it is the price of national progress ? Apply it
to France. France as a nation has, perhaps, passed
through more international struggles than any other na-
tion of modern times. What is the result? Are the French
people stronger or more advanced because of those strug-
gles. Apply it commercially. France to-day carries an
economic burden that she can never pay. Her war debt,
before the beginning of this present war, was six billion
dollars, and it taxed the French people to pay even the
interest on this colossal war debt.
Take it physically. The stature of the Frenchmen of
to-day is two inches less than it was before the Napo-
leonic wars, and if you read contemporary historians,
you will find that even French historians have spoken of
France as a decadent people, a nation whose death rate
is greater than her birth rate. And the reason for that,
it seems to me, is because, in the time of the Napoleonic
wars, three millions and a half of the flower of France
were sacrificed on the field of battle, and during the war
of 1870-71, again the flower of France was sacrificed on
the field of battle. Every race that has passed through
this phase of war has found that its progress was in
spite of, and not because of, the physical conflicts through
which it had passed.
Great Britain is great because it is a federation of
states. Germany is great because of the German feder-
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Conflict and Social Progress
ation of states. Modern Italy has developed because it
is a united Italy, and the United States because they are
united States. The nations that work together, that are
united, are progressing, and the nations that are in con-
tinual conflict are going back. What is the matter with
Mexico? If conflict is the true price of national great-
ness, no country on earth ought to be greater than Mex-
ico, for no nation in the last few years has passed through
so many struggles as Mexico. Yet no one speaks of
Mexico as going forward. Conflict makes for regress
rather than progress, at the present time.
What is true of the nations of the world is more
especially true of the fictitious classes into which modern
society is divided. ''We cry peace, peace, and there is no
peace" between the nations to-day. We have been crying
peace at peace congresses for years, and we have done
the same thing with regard to capital and labor ; and yet
there is not an industry in this Republic that is organized
on a basis of brotherhood, but our industries are organ-
ized on a basis of conflict, and there can be no peace be-
tween capital and labor until the idea of conflict is super-
seded by the social idea of brotherhood, and brotherhood
means democracy and co-operation. Is it true that the
conflicts between labor and capital have made for prog-
ress? Is it true that a strike makes for the advance,
either of industry or business in any given community?
Rather does not a strike mean a breaking up of the indus-
trial organization and the industrial processes in the com-
munity, and doesn't the constant conflict in the industrial
world to-day make for inefficiency and dissipation of en-
ergy and the reduction of physical forces of the units
involved, rather than make for progress and advance?
Business has learned that of conflict within business —
competition is the word there that spells conflict — the cap-
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
italistic end of the business world has learned that con-
flict is not the price of progress, and capital to-day co-
operates, combines, organizes, because it no longer be-
lieves in competition. It believes in competition with la-
bor, but not with itself, and so it organizes and com-
bines. Labor has learned that competition is not a suc-
cessful way of selling labor in the market, and so it has
organized, because conflict or competition in the labor
market has not made for the advance of labor. So labor,
on its side, has learned that conflict is not the price of
progress. But the two units have not learned that co-
operation is a bigger word than either capital or labor.
They co-operate with themselves, but the two elements
are separated to-day and do not co-operate, because in-
dustry is based fundamentally on the idea of conflict.
Capital organizes to increase dividends to the highest
point, and labor organizes to increase wages to the highest
point, and there can be no peace until industry is organ-
ized on the basis of brotherhood and democracy.
All the sciences are working that way. There are sev-
eral movements in the world to-day looking toward dem-
ocracy in industry. The movement had its beginning
when Martin Luther nailed his theses to the church door,
or perhaps I should say rather when Jesus Christ came
with his doctrine of the divine fatherhood. The spirit
was brought into politics when Cromwell rode over the
forces of royalistic England, and from that day to this
the democratic idea has been growing, until the despotic
governments have begun to feel its influence, and it is
being felt in the field of industry. If the gospel of Jesus
Christ is to be fully lived upon this earth, then the people
of America, through the federated churches of America,
must be pledged to the idea of industrial democracy.
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Conflict and Social Progress
The trade union movement is making for democracy
in industry; syndicalism, the I. W. W., is a movement
looking toward industrial democracy, though it is social
anarchy. It teaches that the laborer produces all wealth,
and is therefore entitled to all wealth. Socialism looks
toward industrial democracy, but believes that the end is
not to be obtained by direct action but by political action.
The syndicalist believes that property is his to take, since
he has produced it, and therefore it is not stealing to take
it. The socialist would take over the means of production
and distribution in the nation for all the people, by polit-
ical action.
The church also looks toward social democracy, and
the word it uses to-day is social justice, and social justice
means the application of the principles of brotherhood,
the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ applied to the
whole of human life, so that each man shall have his just
deserts, and be a brother to every other man.
So wdiether we take it in the field of government or in-
dustry, it is not true that physical conflict is the price of
social progress, but rather that social progress has been in
spite of, and not because of, physical conflict. Lester F.
Ward has a theory which he calls intellectual egalitarian-
ism. He means that society advances because of the
knowledge of its people, enabling them to work consci-
ously for a given goal, and that the only true social prog-
ress is that which comes, not from above, foisted upon the
masses, but which comes from within the masses them-
selves. He believes that education and culture will ulti-
mately permeate the whole of the lump until society be-
comes socially self-conscious, and will then consciously
direct its progress toward a given goal ; and that goal,
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
my friends, is the brotherhood of man and the kingdom
of God on earth.
General Sherman said that war is hell, and his definition
has never been disputed. Conflict is war, and to say that
conflict is the price of progress, is equivalent to saying
that hell is the price of heaven ; and that we don't believe.
230
Chapter XVIII.
OUR PUBLIC SCHOOL PROPERTIES AND
SOCIAL PROGRESS.
BY DANA W. BARTLETT.
These are great days we are living in ; greater than the
days of the Renaissance; greater than the days of the
Reformation. The next ten years will mean more than
any hundred years that the world has ever seen. It is a
mighty fine thing to live in these days. I like to stand
before a group of students in a high school or college
and look into their bright, earnest faces, and realize that
they have many years to the good, compared with what
was before me when I left school thirty odd years ago.
We were pioneers in those days. We had to try things
out for ourselves, and finally, out of it all, evolve some
definite line of work. Now the young people coming out
of school are able to enter into these great openings, the
new social opportunities which are theirs.
The last legislature passed a revolutionary bill; I hope
that you are all famihar with it. It is called the Civic
Center Bill, and it made every schoolhouse in the State
of California a civic center. It made it mandatory on
the Boards of Education to grant the free use of the
school buildings to citizens, no charge being made for
light, heat, or janitor or supervision, if these things are
necessary. Almost any kind of activity can be carried
on under that law. It is true that the word "religion" is
left out, and the average county superintendent will prob-
ably rule that sectarian services cannot be held in the
school. But everything else that the citizens want to
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
have can be held in the schoolhouses of the State of Cal-
ifornia. It seems to me that most of the people, or at
any rate a great many of them, cannot know this fact, or
there would not be a schoolhouse in the State that would
not be a center of life and interest in that community.
We have lived so long thinking that the school, with the
vast expenditure which it involved in buildings and land,
was built simply for the children to use five days a week
for a few hours a day. In these days of efficiency, we are
seeing that it is not fair to the tax-payers to use such
buildings only a part of the time. So we are going to
use our school buildings for the good of all the people.
A century and a half ago, on the Atlantic coast, there
was discontent and unrest, and the common men began to
meet and talk in the town halls and in the town meetings.
They were people the world had never heard of before ;
they did not represent kings. They were simply the com-
mon people, representing the common mind, and as they
mixed together in these town halls so many years ago,
really the Revolutionary War was fought out there in
those town meetings, rather than on the battle fields.
A century and a half has passed, and unrest and dis-
content in a time of plenty again exists, and men are be-
ginning to meet and talk again. We have not to-day the
town halls, but we have the schoolhouses ; and again the
people will meet together and elect their presiding officer
and form an organization and discuss and talk, and again
we will have a revolution — not by means of guns, as in
the older days, but by means of the ballot.
So I feel that these are very wonderful days in which
we Hve, days in which we may say that we are glad we
are alive. Here are the buildings, all built for us ; here
is this opportunity for the expression of democracy.
Democracy thus far is, after all, not much more than sim-
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Our Public School Properties and Social Progress
plified autocracy. Until all the people have a part in it,
you cannot call it democracy. But in this State we have
an opportunity to v^rite our own laws ; the simplest peo-
ple in the State of CaHfornia can begin to agitate for
any law or ordinance they may desire. They may work
out their ideas through the initiative, or demand a refer-
endum, and the people can decide what the law shall be.
And remember, it is not safe to have such power without
proper education, and that must come through the use
of the public school buildings.
If, a year ago, there had been a large opportunity for
the expression of democracy in Europe, think you that
the smoke of battle would to-day be hiding the sun? If
the internationalists had been given a month or two
months to meet and consider and talk, do you think there
would have been any war in Europe to-day? If, instead
of a few men at the top declaring war, it had been left to
the people to talk it out in the schoolhouses, a way of set-
tlement would have been found and there would have
been no war.
So in our own economic problems and moral problems,
you must really get back to the people before you have
any real form. I do not believe so much in reforms
from the top, in forcing reforms upon the people, as I do
in the people becoming educated in regard to their needs
and desires, and expressing them, as they naturally will,
and demanding changes in the government to meet those
needs. They themselves will bring about reform.
Take, for instance, the planning of the city. What can
any one man, what can twelve men do? In this city, for
example, ten years ago, you sent for the greatest city
planner in the world. You remember what he did ; how
he built the bungalows on Twin Peaks and drew his
wonderful plans, and after the fire he came back and
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
offered San Francisco that wonderful plan, that would
have made this a far more beautiful city than it is. But
there was no one willing to accept the plan ; the whole
scheme was entirely from the top, and so the Burnham
plans were rejected.
You must first go to the people and educate them if you
want a new charter in any city; you cannot impose a
charter from above, but the people must talk and think
out a plan together, and after a time you will get some-
thing worth while. It may not be the best; the experts
might say that they could give you something far better.
The Kaiser has been able to make reforms in German
cities greater than anything we have here. It is a won-
derful thing to see those cities, without slums, trans-
formed, but transformed from above by the power of au-
tocratic government. Over there the Kaiser and the
burgomaster, and the influential citizens can work out
these things in a way that we cannot do here. But some-
how we here feel that it is better to begin at the bottom
and work up.
So there has come this opportunity of getting together ;
this getting together in a schoolhouse and talking these
things over. If you know people, things look very differ-
ent. If you don't know a man, you may call him a bar-
barian, but if you come to know him, you won't. People
are just folks ; they are all just folks. I have had thirty
years of life in the slums of our great cities ; I have raised
my family where most people, perhaps wouldn't care to
live ; but I have come to realize that people are just folks
after all.
When you come to know one another, the differences
are not very great. The colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady
are sisters, under their skins. I have found, as I mingled
with the foreign people, and they are the people that I
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Our Public School Properties and Social Progress
know perhaps best, that outside of the differences in
language and a httle difference in color and customs, we
are all just the same. I go into the home of my Russian
friends, and I sit down to dinner with them, a big sam-
ovar in the middle of the table, and they let me say grace,
and I say grace in English and they understand it in Rus-
sian. We all understand the language of love. We don't
need long years to discover people if we will just be folks
with them.
We must have, then, a place where we can all get
together, as we can in the schoolhouse. I wish we could
do it in some church, but we haven't discovered the way
to do that yet. We are divided again and again, and you
can't issue any call that will bring all the different divi-
sions together. If you do, trouble will be sure to start.
We can't get together in politics, either. But we can get
together in the public schools, and people have been doing
this all over the nation, and I know it can be done.
I am the president of the Civic Center in my town ; my
first vice president is a Christian Science reader, and the
second vice president is a washerwoman, and we meet and
discuss all the problems of life. And I feel very proud
that I have this position. I hold some positions that you
might say are bigger than that, but none of which I am
prouder. This is so near the common life that I am
glad I am connected with it ; this is a place where we can
develop our common, human work, and really work out
brotherhood. But perhaps we must first get back to
humanhood, where we are all just God's children, where
we can get so close together that these differences that
have seemed so great in the past will disappear, and we
can just join hands together and be workers together.
I haven't any very great message to bring to the world ;
only the simple message of knowing one another in the
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
spirit of the true religion; to join hands together and look
in one another's eyes, and say, ''My brother," no matter
what the difference in state or birth may be. Really, I
don't see much difference in people. I have dined with
lords and ladies and with multimillionaires, and the other
day I went out in the jungle and had a httle Sunday
afternoon visit with the fellows out there in the jungle,
and they asked me to eat Mulligan with them. And I
would have enjoyed eating MulHgan with the boys out
there if I could have stayed, as much as I did, when I
was over in Europe, dining with those high in authority.
I found as I talked with these boys that there was a great
longing for something that they didn't have ; first of all,
perhaps, for a job. They were not tramps or hoboes, but
they were trying to find a place in the world, and some
of them were getting bitter. But some of them had a
philosophy and saw farther than that, and saw beyond to
a time where these conditions would be no more. They
were looking for that time when we should all be workers
together for the common good, and some of those high
up have not yet had that vision, for they think that their
positions must not be jeopardized; they are wilHng to
make the world better, but they believe it must come from
above. But all the great reforms will come from people
and work up.
We are to-day in a changing time ; the old conditions
cannot go on much longer. I am an optimist. I have
seen the very worst of life; I know the worst of all the
large cities, and yet I am very hopeful. But if you should
persuade me that we must live on and on as we have been
during these last years — oh, but you can't persuade me
of it. I know we are going to come out into something
like what Christ meant when he spoke of the kingdom of
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God on earth, and the greatest part that man can do now,
is to do his part toward helping on that time.
I have been a worker in the social settlement and the
institutional church for over thirty years. I have talked
with many workers at home and abroad, and this is the
message that I bring: That in the next ten years the
activities of the social settlement and the institutional
church will have passed over to the public, to the city,
the State, and the Nation. There will be left, on the part
of the settlement, the inspirational element, that is to
say, it will consist of an educated, refined family or group
who wish to be helpful and join with the neighbors, and
who seek out the difficult sections of the city ; who will
settle near a schoolhouse and who will simply be neigh-
bors and help to organize with the neighbors the clubs and
classes and other helpful things, through the public school,
instead of building new buildings.
The institutional church is passing. I have given my
life to clubs and gymnasiums, and all the rest of the
things that make up the institutional church, but I have
been working toward the time when everything of that
sort would be done in a larger way through the public.
There will remain the inspirational church, not the in-
stitutional church.
Some one has asked me, "Will there be more preachers
or fewer when that time comes?" I said, ''There may
be fewer, but the quality will be higher." A man who
succeeds in the church that is to be must be a man who
has had a wonderful and deep spiritual experience and
who has entered into this great spiritual awakening that
is going on all over the world, following the social awak-
ening. For I fully believe that the deep spiritual power,
the living with the Divine and recognizing his power
in our lives — the recognition of the imminent God — it is
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this that is coming, and the minister who reaHzes this will
be able to draw the people together and inspire the young
men and women for the work that is to be done in the
days to come.
So we have to-day this wonderful bill, not raising
money to build great buildings, for the buildings are built
for us ; we have got the wonderful buildings ; and they
are wonderful ; and the buildings which are to be built
are still more wonderful. We are just building in Los
Angeles a new school building, and soon there will be
twenty-seven new auditoriums in the school buildings of
Los Angeles, where the people can hold any kind of meet-
ing they want, deaHng with morals or esthetics or politics
or anything that is for the good of the people. Perhaps
we haven't all understood this, and as a city planner, I
want to bring it to your attention to keep the thought in
the minds of the city planners to-day regarding the city
centers. The new type of city is not like New York, for
instance, built up solidly with tenement houses and apart-
ment houses, but a city limited, say, to a five-mile limit,
and then with satellite cities all about, connected by rapid
transit. That is the ideal now, so that in these satelHte
cities growing up all about in the metropolitan district,
there will be an opportunity for the finest kind of life this
country has ever seen. There will be a civic center in
every one of these little cities. There will be several
things brought together in a group ; the school, of course,
and I hope the newer idea of the one-story, fire-proof
schoolhouse will obtain. There will be the gymnasium,
the public baths, and the voting booths. I hope to see
the time when we will do away with the idea of the pre-
cinct and make the school district the political unit, so
that the schoolhouse may become the political center of
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Our Public School Properties and Social Progress
that unit and therefore of the State. There will be club
rooms of all kinds ; there will be the play ground and the
park around about that.
Don't you see what this is going to mean in the days
to come? The people have been broken up before, sepa-
rated from one another. They have had the saloon and
the brothel, but now the time has come when they are
going to find something better than that. People are not
naturally bad. Perhaps that is not good theology ; but
from my experience, and I know the worst, I know peo-
ple from the under side ; I say people are not naturally
bad. There are some badly born, a few must be shut
away from society, but with the great mass of men, if
you give them a chance, they will be good. As I think
back to the town where I was reared, I remember that
when I was twenty-one years of age, I had never seen a
saloon. I don't know of a single boy that grew up with
me that ever took to drink. But if there had been saloons
existing in these communities in Maine and Iowa, where
I lived, I couldn't have said that. There would have been
a certain proportion that would surely have gone to
drunkards' graves. They were average people, but the
opportunity for good was there rather than the oppor-
tunity for bad, and so they chose the good. So I am
in dead earnest about making it easy for people to be
good, and putting before them the opportunity for the
largest life.
We have, then, this new idea of what the schoolhouse
is to be. Some of my church friends say, "Aren't you
losing a tremendous opportunity for the church, when
you give up the work of the institutional church?" It
may be, in a narrow sense, I am; possibly in the insti-
tutional church I might have, at the end of the year, if
I kept all these activities in the church building, a few
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more in the church. But when I think of the larger spir-
itual opportunity before the right kind of people, I want
to give everybody this chance.
I remember once I had a bunch of fellows who were
going to be splendid men ; but there came into our neigh-
borhood anti-social forces, a prize-fighting pavilion and a
race track. Within three months I lost every one of those
boys; I have never been able to get one of them back.
Some of them are noted prize fighters now. But all the
money and strength I had put into my work seemed lost
because the State allowed race tracks and fighting.
The church ought to do this civic center work, as a
sample of what can be done, until the people are educated ;
but when the city or State is ready to do it on a still
larger scale, then we should get behind that movement.
So we are going to get together in the public school-
houses, and I have four purposes for which the public
schools should be used.
In the first place, the public schoolhouse and its grounds
makes possible the development of a leisure time program
in every city. Eight hours of work, eight hours of sleep,
and eight hours of leisure for every one, and if you will
tell me how a boy or a man uses these eight hours of
leisure, I will tell you what his character is. The time
has come to organize the leisure time of the community.
If we do not, there are those who will, who are seeking
to make money out of this desire for play and recreation.
They have been doing this, and have cursed every com-
munity. It is for just such men and women as we are
here to organize the leisure time program of our com-
munities, and let it center in the schoolhouse or the play-
ground. Let it center first, if you will, in the church
itself, but in some way organize this program, recognize
the fact that people must play. That is something in life
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Our Public School Properties and Social Progress
that is necessary ; you can't expect a man to work all the
time. We have reduced the hours of labor to eight, and
that is as it should be ; but we must remember the other
eight hours. Recreation must be as free as education.
I know this is not yet true, but the time is coming in
every community. We are going to have a hall like this
in every high school. Think what an opportunity there
will be, if the bill goes through creating a commission for
educational moving pictures, so that there may be films
for use all over the State. And there are such wonderful
pictures now on the market ! Then we can begin to
call the people together, not only for education, but for
recreation. Here in this town and in every town of any
size in the State, are the organizations, musical and other ;
but they are but the beginning of finer things for the
future, when the finest music will be offered absolutely
free to all the people, as well as the finest art ; when
everything that has any uplift in it will be offered to the
people.
How the people across the water do enjoy these things !
They, also, have leisure time, and their leisure time has
been organized. We have not learned how to do that yet,
but we are learning. We are going to have gymnasiums,
baths, moving pictures, pageants, and great community
days. Do you know what that means? That is one of
the new things, the celebrating of community days. The
other morning at Riverside, six or seven thousand peo-
ple came out before daylight and climbed the mountain
to be ready for the first chord of music that was to usher
in the Easter dawn. That is a great community day that
is celebrated every year in Riverside.
I was in Rochester one day in the park with Charles
Mulford Robinson, and he told me that the previous Sun-
day they had had a community day. There had been a
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
hundred varieties of lilacs in bloom and sixty or seventy
thousand people came out to enjoy the odor and beauty of
those Hlacs. He told me that they were planning for a
great day in that park, through which flows a river, and
that they were going to have floats and music, and that
a hundred thousand people would come and enjoy all that
beauty, and the pleasure of getting together in the open.
In city after city this is being done. They are saying,
we must get together and enjoy life ; we must feel that we
are one. So this is going to be worked out through our
social centers.
You will notice, in speaking of this law, that I have
said that the law passed by the last legislature makes every
schoolhouse a civic center. In the East, they use the
word, "social center." Here we differentiate; we say
that a social center is established by individuals ; but the
civic center is where the people make use of the school
building, where they ask for the free use of the building
to carry out their own ideas. You have these here and in
Los Angeles. I wish the next time you go to Los Angeles
you would go to the Macy School and see what is being
done there. It was a dreary place in the old days, but
there is no gang there now. They are all in the school
building. There has not been a juvenile arrest in the last
year. Miss Sterry told me the other day : "Don't publish
this abroad, but there really isn't any need for me any
more. It all goes on of itself naturally now; these boys
don't want to be bad." And yet these same boys and
girls are but the younger brothers and sisters of the old
"Coyote gang" that used to vex us so. What is the dif-
ference? Simply that an opportunity has been given to
them to get together under the right conditions and make
better lives for themselves.
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Our Public School Properties and Social Progress
The slum is going to go. I never speak without giving
my slogan, "Los Angeles, 1920 ; a city of a million people
and without a slum." I don't care quite so much about
the million people, but I am determined to see that it is
a city without a slum. We are going to close the saloon ;
the brothel is going. The red Hght abatement law is being
applied. We are working at the problem of housing. In
the future the great factories will no longer establish
themselves in Los Angeles, but in the open country, or
near the harbor, and we have there an opportunity such
as a very few cities in this country have, of building a
new type of city. Already a lot of people have awakened
to the necessity of carrying out such a plan.
Then there are three other things for which we want
to use the schoolhouses. Here is a place for adult edu-
cation. We have not thought about the adults very much
in the past, but now we are just beginning to think of our
opportunity, and what must be done. I have been asked
how many immigrants are going to come to us after the
war closes? I could have told you how many we should
be likely to get, before the war started, very nearly, and
I should have said a hundred thousand a year coming
into the port of Los Angeles. How many now? I will
tell you who the first ones will be ; they will be those sent
for by the ones already here, whose families have been
broken up in the old country. A German told me that
that was his case. He said, "My two brothers are in the
hospital ; my brother-in-law is wounded ; my uncle is on
the firing line, and I have already written all my family
and told them to take the first ship and come to America
and I would look after them, and I know many of my
friends who have done the same things."
I have just read in the paper that Canada is preparing
for a great influx, believing that when the soldiers are
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
dismissed, many of them, finding their families broken
up and their work gone, will come to America. At any
rate, we will have all that we can handle, and we must
provide for them ; we must open every school to them,
beginning from the start with the best literature.
Then the next two things — and these two last are the
most important points that I have to give you this after-
noon. The schoolhouse offers the best place for citizen-
ship education. Do you know what I mean? You will
pardon me if I explain by describing local conditions,
because I have been connected with them.
To-day, when any one goes to the clerk in Los Angeles
and asks to take out his second papers, the clerk hands
him a Httle card, and explains to him that he will have to
be prepared for examination after three months. Then
the United States will put its gumshoe men on his track ;
find out what his character abroad was, but meanwhile
the applicant must be prepared to pass this examination.
And so the clerk advises him to go down to the Los An-
geles high school and study for three months. So they
are going down there, fifty or sixty of them every month,
to the school of citizenship under Professor Kelso, and
getting instruction in government, learning about our
Federal, State, and city government, and listening to lec-
tures by prominent people every Monday night, and on
Friday night there is instruction in the English language.
At the end of that time, after at least ten weeks of study,
they are given the certificate of which I hold a copy in
my hand, and which I will read to you. This is the first
certificate that was given from this school of citizenship :
LOS ANGELES EVENING HIGH SCHOOL
DEPARTMENT OF CIVIC EDUCATION OF IMMIGRANTS
This is to certify that Mike Schultz has completed
the course and passed the examination in United
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Our Public School Properties and Social Progress
States Citizenship as approved by the Superior
Court of the State of California, and the United
States District Court, having jurisdiction of natu-
ralization in Los Angeles County.
R. G. VAN CLEVE,
Principal.
C. C. KELSO,
Director.
November 17, 1914.
With that certificate, the applicant for citizenship takes
his witness before either the Superior Judge or the Fed-
eral Judge, and does not have any public examination.
The witness testifies as to his character, and so he is re-
ceived into citizenship. If a young man or woman has
gone through the high school, and studied civics and re-
ceived a diploma, that is accepted in place of a public
examination. If you are interested in good citizenship,
take this idea to your own county. It can be applied in
any county ; the Federal Government has accepted it, and
any school system that will give the required education
can have its diploma received in that way, instead of hav-
ing the applicant examined in the old way.
When the applicant has received his citizenship papers,
the judge instructs him to go on the following night to
the Los Angeles high school for the commencement exer-
cises. I know of nothing finer in the State of California
than these recognition services on the last Friday of every
month. Here are these new-made citizens, and a great
house full of people to greet them; and on the platform
is one of the members of our Civic Center League acting
as host. The judge calls the new citizens up, one at a
time — and they have come from all the warring nations
of Europe — he calls them to the platform, and gives them
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
an address and extends to them the right hand of citizen-
ship, just as formally as I have been in the habit of receiv-
ing men into the church. As a matter of fact, Judge
Wood is descended from a line of Presbyterian ministers,
and sometimes he makes a mistake, and calls it the right
hand of fellowship instead of the right hand of citizen-
ship. The ceremony is as solemn as the communion serv-
ice in the church. It is really a sacrament, for it means an
absolute transformation in the lives of these men and
women who come to us in that way.
Then they join the New Citizens Civic Club, and once
a year we have a great welcome feast, when all the new
citizens come together with the old citizens at a dinner,
and the old citizen pays a dollar for two plates, and they
all sit down together around the table, and after dinner
listen to the speeches. And this is a real getting together ;
there are no differences raised of speech or religion ; they
are all just folks getting together, and what it means to
the man from across the water is not easy to express.
Formerly there was only the saloon-keeper to welcome
him with the right hand of fellowship ; but to-day the
finest and best of our people are there as his friends. For
these people bring great things to us as well as we to
them. I remember one night, just after the public re-
ception, when we always ask them to give testimony as
to why they are glad to become American citizens, one
Russian said, "Until to-night I was a dummy; nobody
ever asked my advice or who to vote for ; but, judge, to-
night you have given me a voice, and from now on I will
have a voice in the government."
Another Russian said : "I came here five years ago. I
worked my way through the high school and received a
diploma on which I received my citizenship. I have been
a year in college. In my country this could not have hap-
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Our Public School Properties and Social Progress
pened, but here you have been so kind to the Russian ; you
have given him all that you have given to the native born,
and I am glad to be one of you."
This is a great, new movement that we are engaged in,
and we are all glad that we have a part in it. Governor
Wallace and the others responsible for the Civic Center
Law put it through; now we are forming civic centers
everywhere in all the schools. If you have not civic cen-
ters in your town, if your own district school has not
been organized, I wish you would get together. Here is
our little constitution for the civic center, for it is a good
plan to have them somewhat alike. Some organization
should begin; perhaps the Parent Teachers' Association,
perhaps some other association ; somewhere there is a
group in your town that will want to get together to dis-
cuss these great problems which are before the county
and the State and the Nation. Here is our form of or-
ganization. Just make application to the Board of Edu-
cation, and go ahead and organize and elect your officers.
Then you can have your social gatherings, and so we have
at last begun to see the dawn of democracy. And the
dawning of democracy means the disappearance of so
many of the evil things that have troubled us. The saloon
is going from Los Angeles County and from all over the
State, the next time we have a chance to vote on that
question; and with the saloon gone, and the schoolhouse
as a meeting-place, and plenty of good recreation, and
all- the things that make for righteousness, we will have
a better day, and it will be well worth while to live in
that wonderful, new time.
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Chapter XIX.
PROCESS AND CLIMAX IN SOCIAL PROGRESS.
BY D. M. GANDIER.
I don't know of anything that will make a city more
livable than the destruction of the liquor traffic. I believe
the biggest destructive element in the community is the
saloon.
I was interested, as Doctor Talbot pointed us forward
to the time when we are going to reahze the brotherhood
of man, the completer democracy, and when we destroy
that which destroys manhood, we are making for democ-
racy. You can have some forms of society with the
mass of the people debauched, because the few at the
top remain in control ; but if democracy is to succeed, you
must have the mass of the people up to standard in both
intellect and moral worth; and if the mass fall below
standard, democracy is doomed.
The greatest danger to democracy to-day is the de-
moralizing influence of alcohol. I believe when we shall
have realized the victory in our fight against alcohol, that
we shall have largely cleared the way for making the city
beautiful and livable, and for getting the brotherhood of
man on earth. I want to tell you in a few words why I
beheve that the victory will be ours in the next decade.
In the first place I find, as I look out over God's uni-
verse, that he works, not by a slow and endless process
which goes on and on forever, always making progress
and yet never finally getting to the goal. I find through-
out the universe that God works by progress, plus a
process; you get ready, and then you realize the fruit.
You have the process, plus the climax. That is the way
things work in nature. There was a century plant in my
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Process and Climax in Social Progress
backyard which I watched for two years, and during that
time there did not seem to be a particle of change, and
for ten years it hadn't changed at all. Then in the spring
of 1901 that century plant started to send up from its
center a great trunk, and in six weeks it had Hfted its
immense blossom above the chimney tops of the house.
Judged by the rate of progress during the previous years,
it would have taken a century indeed to accomplish any-
thing; but what you had in fact was sixteen years of
getting ready, and then a climax, during which, in six
short weeks, greater visible results were accomplished
than in sixteen years before.
That is what I see going on in the world of nature, and
things work that way in moral reform also. When Mrs.
Harriet Beecher Stowe visited England, she was pre-
sented to Queen Victoria, and the queen gave her two
bracelets, one engraved with the date of the emancipation
of slaves in England, and one left blank, to be engraved
when the slaves were emancipated in the United States.
Mrs. Stowe never expected to see that second bracelet
inscribed ; she did not think her daughter would live to
see it inscribed ; but she did hope that in the providence
of God, her Httle grandchildren might see the inscription
put on that second bracelet. But so quickly did the climax
come, that Mrs. Stowe herself lived a generation after
the bracelet had been inscribed ; twenty-five years after
slavery had been abolished she was still with us.
If you look around over the world to-day and see what
is actually going on, and then think about the past hun-
dred years, I think you will admit that the climax in the
fight against alcohol is ours. I look back and think what
conditions were a hundred years ago, I am not surprised
that it took a long process to get any results. We were
bound in ignorance and prejudice. Do you know that a
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
hundred years ago in New York, a Methodist conference
refused to pass a resolution that a minister should not
sell liquor on the side to increase his salary? That was
in the year 1812. The next year they adopted the resolu-
tion in a modified form, and provided that he should not
sell strong liquor ; it was all right for him to sell wine and
beer, but not brandy.
In the churches and colleges, and in the social life of
the land it was taken for granted that Hquor was a legiti-
mate and proper beverage ; only, they thought, some peo-
ple abused it. To-day preachers who believe in the use
of alcoholic liquor for drinking purposes are just about as
scarce as hen's teeth; if you do find one, it will be
hard work to find a church that wants him. The churches
are sounding a united note against the liquor traffic and
holding up the idea of total abstinence for the individual
and of prohibition for the nation, and all the churches
are falling into line.
Look at the scientific world. Only a few years ago a
man was denied life insurance because he was a total
abstainer. What do we find to-day? At that convention
of fife insurance presidents in New York City last De-
cember, one of their experts who had been figuring on
the insurance tables for forty years, reported that alcohol
was such an enemy to long life that if Europe were to
maintain her present prohibition for ten years she would
save enough able-bodied men to take the place of half a
miUion who might fall in the present war. And this state-
ment was made by a life insurance expert; he wasn't talk-
ing as a temperance enthusiast, but as a cold-blooded,
business scientist, reporting to his employer, and he stated
that the evidence of half a century had demonstrated that
alcohol shortened men's lives anywhere from eight to
twenty years on an average, among drinking people.
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Process and Climax in Social Pro sir ess
i'
Everybody realizes to-day that alcohol is an enemy to
good health, physical, and moral. Did you notice the
resolution passed last July at the convention of alienists,
saying that it had been proven to the satisfaction of that
convention that even the moderate use of alcohol was
productive of all forms of mental deterioration? There-
fore they called upon the States of this Union to put
liquor where men couldn't get it for drinking purposes,
and called upon the doctors to lead in a great campaign
of education against the harmful effects of alcohol.
How about the industrial field? I remember when we
couldn't have a logging bee without having something
strong to drink, and every man helped himself. We used
to serve it as a ration in our army and navy not long ago.
How about to-day? Every employer of labor realizes
to-day that if he wants to get the best out of his men he
must keep them away from Hquor. During the building
of the Panama Canal the order was issued that no liquor
was to be sold. Now the order has gone forth that the
employees must be total abstainers.
A great corporation has issued an order that any em-
ployee who retains membership in a club where liquor
is served, will be discharged. The employer realizes the
value of preventing accidents, since the passage of the
employers' liability act, so they have said to the men,
first, that they must not drink while they are on duty ; and
then they said, ''You must not drink while you are off
duty" ; and now they are going a httle farther and are
saying, "You can't retain your service with us and keep
your membership in a club that serves liquor." For they
know that if they do, they may be tempted to break the
rules.
One of the biggest companies in South Chicago, which
employs a great many men, last November put three big,
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
electric signs over the three gates of their shops. "Did
booze ever do you any good?" These were the words
over one gate. Over another, "Did booze ever get you
a better job?" And over the third, "Did booze ever con-
tribute to the happiness of your family?"
What did they do that for? Were they moved by a
great moral impulse to get their men to leave drink alone ?
Not a bit of it. They were moved by the consciousness
that if their men would leave drink alone, they would earn
better wages for themselves and better dividends for the
company. It was a matter of cold-blooded business. The
modern industrial world is against the liquor traffic.
I was stopped by the superintendent of one of the big
lumber companies in Mendocino County a few days ago,
and he wanted to know if I couldn't help him to get rid
of the saloons in that district. I said : "What has aroused
your interest? Two years ago you were absolutely indif-
ferent; didn't care whether the saloons were closed or
not." "Yes, I know," he said, "but they closed them up
north of here where we have a big mill, and now we have
had eighteen months of it up there, and we know the dif-
ference. We haven't had an accident up there since. The
men have to go a good many miles to get liquor now. We
don't have any men drunk on Sunday and going to work
Monday morning unsteady. I have discovered that nearly
all our accidents in this mill are on Monday, and that is
because the mills are closed on Sunday and the saloons
are open, and on Monday the men are unsteady, and acci-
dents result. We have found out that it is to our advan-
tage to have the saloons as far away as we can get them."
The modern industrial world is awake to the fact that
alcohol is against efficiency.
Connie Mack has recently said that moderate drinking
will get a man in the long run just as certainly as exces-
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Process and Climax in Social Progress
sive drinking. There is nothing that takes so many men
off the diamond. So the modern world of sport is going
to be very largely a world of total abstainers, not from a
moral impulse, but because of the consciousness that al-
cohol is an enemy of efficiency.
In the world of social endeavor, we find that the great
word is "prevention." When we sent our men down to
Panama to build the canal, if we had sent doctors down
to cure yellow fever after it developed, we would have
been so busy curing the men that we would never have
been able to build the canal. But we sent our sanitary
engineers down there and found out how to prevent yel-
low fever and clean the place up, and the result was that
there was no yellow fever and the Canal Zone became
a health resort. Prevention is the word for us in the
modern medical world and in the criminal world as well.
How can we prevent crime? A boy saved is worth sev-
eral boys rescued. We must prevent them from going
down. Now, the biggest enemy of physical and moral
health is alcohol, and if we can destroy alcohol, we shall
do more to prevent disease, physical and moral, than by
any other thing that we can do, and we shall throw around
youth an environment such as Doctor Bartlett was telling
you about. If we are to prevent crime and disease, the
first thing to do is to outlaw the liquor traffic, and get ab-
solutely rid of the whole, cursed thing, and that conviction
is taking hold of men to-day, and they are going to do it.
Look in the political world. What a change ! I re-
member going up to Sacramento to try to gti a law to let
the people close the saloons if they wanted to, and I was
a very lonesome fellow around the halls up there. They
were afraid to talk about the temperance question even
in a whisper. To-day you can get about half of the mem-
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
bers of the Senate to stand up on the floor and say openly
that they would like a chance to vote against the whole
thing.
Last spring we had nine prohibition States in this
Union. To-night we have nine more. First we got Vir-
ginia, then Nevada, Colorado, Washington, and Oregon,
and since the first of January, Arkansas and Alabama and
Idaho and Iowa ; and Utah would have done it, too, if the
governor hadn't vetoed the bill after the legislature ad-
journed. But the first time the people get a chance they
will pass it, and the governor can't veto it.
For the first time this year the question of prohibition
got on to the floor of Congress. There was opposition to
the prohibition resolution from the White House ; Presi-
dent Wilson opposed it quietly but decidedly, and it was
opposed by the Republican leader, and by Mr. Under-
wood, and yet a majority of the members of the House
of Representatives in Washington voted in favor of
prohibition. It takes two thirds to submit it, but a ma-
jority voted for it, even in spite of the opposition. They
told us we were fools to bring it up under such conditions,
and yet we got a majority. The indications are that we
will get two-thirds in the very near future.
Think of the testimony that has come from Russia since
that country has been on the water wagon. The Alinister
of Finance said that in two mining regions where thirty
per cent of the men had been called to the army, the
remaining seventy per cent were producing more than
the whole force used to produce when they drank. Rus-
sia, without liquor, even with war, is more prosperous
than Russia with liquor and at peace.
England is facing the fact that if they are to do their
best in the war they must get rid of liquor. Lloyd George
said, ''We are fighting Germany, Austria, and Hquor, and
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Process and Climax in Social Progress
of these three the worst is liquor." King George has
given orders that there shall be no more wine served in
the royal household; the wine cellars are sealed, and the
order has gone forth that there is to be no more liquor
served in Kitchener's house, and all this so that it may
be possible to suppress the traffic that is debauching the
nation.
A social worker in England went before the National
Council of the Churches and made this plea. He asked
the churches to help prepare for ten thousand babies that
will be born in a few months, denied a father's name;
ten thousand children whose mothers are not wives, and
he said to that council, "This has happened because drink
has dethroned the judgment and the reason and the self-
control of our soldier boys, and they have debauched our
girls." Do you wonder that England is facing the ques-
tion as to how she can get rid of that influence which is
worse than war, the debauching influence of the liquor
traffic ?
When T look around and see the whole civilized world
awake to the fact that this is the cause of economic ineffi-
ciency, of moral debauchery and debasement, and all
working together, the moral and financial and industrial
forces of the nation, to remove the cause, I am absolutely
sure that God's climax is not far away, and I expect, in
the next five years, to see written into the Constitution of
the United States, a prohibition of the sale and manu-
facture of alcohol ; that will mean more to civilization
than did the emancipation of the slaves. I thank God
that I am alive to-day, and that I have put some of my
young manhood into the fight, laying the foundations of
the mighty empire to be built on this Pacific Coast, and
that will make possible and successful a democracy of
pure manhood and womanhood.
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Chapter XX.
THE MOVEMENT AGAINST THE SALOON AND
SOCIAL PROGRESS.
BY MATT. S. HUGHES.
When I asked Doctor Gandier this afternoon what
phase of the subject he would Hke to have me present, he
gave me a roving commission, much to my dehght, and
perhaps .it will be much to your regret. But I think, as I
speak first, that I will try to sketch in what might be
called the historical background of our whole subject.
There is a logic in events, as well as a logic of words ;
underlying the great temperance movement of to-day are
two fundamental principles : One is total abstinence for
the individual, and the other, legal prohibition for the
State. Now, there is no necessary and vital connection be-
tween these two. Theoretically a man may be a total ab-
stainer in the absence of a prohibitory law ; and there are
rumors that people sometimes indulge in the use of intox-
icating liquors, even in prohibition States. But the experi-
ence of those who have been at work in the temperance
campaigns indicates that these things must go hand in
hand. We must have total abstinence and legal prohi-
bition ; for the drink habit supports the drink traffic, and
the traffic supports the habit ; and in the course of events,
those who have been engaged in temperance reform have
been brought to the espousal of these two principles.
But it will surprise some to learn that in the beginning
the temperance reform movement was characterized by
neither one of these two fundamental principles of the
movement to-day.
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The Movement Against the Saloon and Social Progress
The honor of inaugurating the temperance reform
movement belongs to the nineteenth century, and to the
United States of America. It was already impending as
a conflict in the closing years of the eighteenth century ;
but the eyes of men were holden to the vastness of its
proportions.
It came in consequence of a desperate need in the early
years of the American Republic, for according to history,
those were years of drunkenness, and this condition had
been aggravated by two circumstances ; first, the laxness
resulting from seven years of war, during which a great
many of the influential leaders of the colonies had fallen
into dangerous habits of drink, and then, as always, those
who were leaders, did not lack imitators among the rank
and file.
The other thing was the increased importation and
manufacture of distilled spirits, which furnished a dead-
lier substitute for the milder fermented liquors, which,
up to that time, had been the chief drinks of the people.
Drinking had the sanction of social custom. In the
family, liquor was used as a cure in the case of sickness,
and the same liquor was used to drink each other's health
at social functions. The farmer furnished it to his field
hands, and at college commencements everybody got
openly drunk. Civic displays, family gatherings, all so-
cial functions, were characterized by the flow of an
abundance of liquor. It had the tacit sanction of the
Church. In the almost universal spirit of drinking, the
habits of the clergy had not escaped. They drank before
they entered their pulpits, and with the people after the
services. Dr. Lyman Beecher has left on record a de-
scription of the ordination of a minister in Connecticut;
and it was that experience of his which inspired that fa-
mous set of temperance sermons which had so much to
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Addresses IV or Id's Social Progress Congress
do with the early history of the prohibition campaign in
the United States of America.
If we were looking for the pioneer reformer in the tem-
perance work in America, strange to say, we should be
obliged to go to England ; and history confers on the name
of John Wesley, as early as 1743, that distinction, in the
rules given for the United Societies of Methodists.
Among those rules was one which provided that they
should not drink ardent spirits or beer, nor use spirits
except in cases of extreme necessity. All of that becomes
exceedingly interesting, for when the Methodist Episcopal
Church was organized here in 1784, that set of rules was
adopted ; and from the beginning, the Methodist Episco-
pal Church has been under a prohibitory law.
If you want to know how far John Wesley was ahead
of his times, let us notice just a moment, if you please,
what followed his early legislation. That rule was
adopted in 1784, in the United States by the United So-
ciety of Methodists. In 1790 they proceeded to modify
it, and cut out the words, "extreme necessity" and "buying
and selling." A man then could be a bishop, and buy
and sell liquor, and those words were never restored un-
til 1848. In the General Conference of 1812, after it had
been called up, the General Conference voted down a
resolution which provided that no local preacher should
maintain his ministerial character if found guilty of buy-
ing or selling liquor; and it was not until ninety years
after John Wesley that the very first temperance conven-
tion was held in the United States. He was at least a
hundred years ahead of those engaged in temperance
reform.
The first phase of temperance reform in this country
may be designated as the phase of unorganized protest;
a time when men's eyes were being opened to the evils of
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The Movement Against the Saloon and Social Progress
drink, and some voices were being lifted against these
evils. The prophet of that first dispensation was Dr.
Benjamin Ross, of Philadelphia. He had received his
medical education abroad and in Philadelphia ; he was a
patriot as well as a physician, and at this time he occupied
a place of prominence among the medical men of Phila-
delphia. He had been a member of the Continental Con-
gress of 1776, and was one of the signers of the Decla-
ration of Independence, and he had been Surgeon-Gen-
eral of the Medical Department of the Continental Army,
and a member of the convention called in Philadelphia
for the ratification of the Constitution. He was a man
so outstanding that his voice would be Hstened to in the
discussion of any public question. In 1875, he issued his
famous monograph which bore the title, 'The Evil Effects
of Alcoholic Spirits upon the Human Mind and Body."
It was the very first formulated discussion of the liquor
subject by any man who might presume to speak with
scientific authority. It was the leading document of the
temperance movement for forty years, and he struck
boldly at the twin superstition ; the value of alcohol as a
food, and as a medicine. But the weakness of his book
was the recommendation of wine and beer as substitutes
for distilled liquors. This document started no move-
ment, but it had a great deal to do with the raising up
of other men who took part in the movement in the nine-
teenth century.
Then followed a period of organization, and that began
in the year 1808, when the first temperance society was
organized. And for a quarter of a century, organizations
sprang up all over the new Republic. The outstanding
feature in this period of organization, however, was the
coming into being of the American Temperance Society
in the year 1826. In just a few years it had spread into a
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
score of States ; it numbered about seven thousand local
societies ; it had over a million members, and it materially
cut down the importation and manufacture of distilled
spirits.
Now, it would seem as if the movement were well un-
der way ; but will it surprise you if I say that it was not
until 1836 that there was a really genuine temperance
society in the United States, what we would mean to-
day when we speak of a temperance society? The prog-
ress had been much more apparent than real, for the only
thing that these early temperance societies had attempted
to do was to do away with the use of distilled spirits,
leaving the people free to use the temperance drinks,
known as wine and beer and cider.
For " instance, the first temperance society organized
had this by-law; that no member of the society was to
use whisky or gin or brandy or a composition of any
of these, under penalty of a fine of twenty-five cents, ex-
cept at a public dinner; and it was further provided in
that by-law, that this should not interfere with the use of
ardent spirits in connection with religious exercises, in-
cluding weddings and christenings and installations.
Another society, organized in 1818, had this provision;
that if any member of that society should be found intox-
icated, he should pay a fine of two shillings, unless it
was on the Fourth of July or any regular Muster Day.
Those were the fanatics of that time.
As late as 1833, the leading temperance organization,
the American Temperance Society, at its national conven-
tion, voted down a resolution putting that society upon
the platform of total abstinence for its membership. But
in 1836, teetotalism, something new under the sun that
the people had been hearing about for several years, came
to the front.
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The Movement Against the Saloon and Social Progress
The national convention of the American Temperance
Society was held in Saratoga, not far from where one
of the battles of the War of Independence was fought.
The society, at that convention, passed the total abstain-
ers' resolution, and it was the signal for wholesale de-
sertions from the temperance ranks, by the hundreds
and thousands temperance societies disbanded. They
didn't intend to be called fanatics, and men whose voices
had been heard under the old pledge, were now silent.
But at least the bankrupt temperance movement — a
drunken temperance movement — had one of the funda-
mental principles in its possession.
Then followed what may be called the legislative period.
That may be dated from the year 1838. They discovered
what would be a good lesson for us to learn ; they dis-
covered that moral enthusiasm without legal machinery
is never strong enough to deal with commercialized evil.
You may date that new period from 1838, when a com-
mittee of the Maine legislature made a recommendation
of a prohibition law to save the people from the influence
of the legalized traffic. It failed to get through the legis-
lature ; you have heard of good measures since that have
failed. But the people of the State of Maine took the
matter up and elected a legislature that passed the bill at
a succeeding session. The governor vetoed it — you have
heard of that sort of thing since. But in the year 1846
they placed the first temperance law upon the statute book
of a State, in the State of Maine. It was a weak law, and
in 1852, under the leadership of General Neal Dow, who
has been called the "Columbus of Prohibition," that law
was given teeth. They added to it the search and seizure
clause, as it was called, which provided that the apparatus
of the business should be evidence of the business in court.
And that Maine law, the original law passed in 1846,
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
has been altered and strengthened, but has never been
repealed.
Then the movement v^^ent on from 1846 to 1860, and
there were prohibition laws in Maine, New Hampshire,
Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Del-
aware, New York, Michigan, and other States, until sev-
enteen States had passed prohibition laws, some of them
twice. In New Jersey, the popular vote was in favor of
it, but they succeeded in overcoming the popular voice in
the legislature. If the movement had gone on as it
started in 1846, the American saloon would have been
extinct by 1865.
Have you ever stopped to ask why the movement was
suddenly checked, and why, fifty years after the time
when the conflict ought to have been over, we are still
in the midst of it? What happened just about that time?
Then came the Civil War. That period has been prolific
of problems which we have been trying to solve ever
since. It was a time, you remember, when they passed
a war tariff, and we have been paying war tariffs ever
since the Civil War, at first for the carrying on of hos-
tilities, and later for the protection of infant industries
until those great, protected industries became overgrown,
and parties rose and fell as they promised the people to
deal with the tariff. It was at the time when we began to
pay great subsidies to railroads, and millions of acres of
the people's land were handed over to them. California
remained true to the Union, not so much by virtue of any
vital connection with it, but rather as a matter of senti-
ment, and Lincoln saw the necessity, as did other leaders,
of binding the two coasts together with ties of steel.
Then came the land grabs and the timber scandals, and
the Credit Mobilier, and Congressmen were found with
that stock in their possession. It was the beginning of
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The Movement Against the Saloon and Social Progress
the tremendous era of graft in the United States, and
much of the reform of the twentieth century has been
directed against the evils which arose during the Civil
War.
It was necessary to raise more revenue, and you re-
member that they talked of taxing liquor ; and one man
in Washington, a man of powerful intellect, who knew
what that meant — Lincoln — when the bill was laid before
him, declared that he would rather lose his right arm
than sign it. But finally, with the promise of the liquor
traffic that it should be repealed after the war, he did
sign it. That promise has never been fulfilled by the
Hquor interests. The liquor interests stayed at home dur-
ing the war and fattened their purses at the expense of
the people. It is a significant thing that the United States
Brewers' Association dates from the year 1862 ; while we
were in the midst of the Civil War, they were at home,
fixing up their fences. And the first "patriotic" action of
that association — and I hope you will remember it next
year — was to make a fight against a tax of a dollar a
barrel on beer for the purpose of war revenue, and they
succeeded in getting it reduced to sixty cents.
When the smoke lifted from the battlefields and the
soldiers came home, out of all these States that had
prohibited the liquor traffic, one only remained true, and
that was the State of Maine. All the ground was lost
during that time. War means something more than a
few battlefields and a few men killed. We shall be pay-
ing for that war, and dealing with the problems of that
war when we march, as a people, into the twenty-first
century. It gave the whisky traffic its great opportunity,
and it was quick to seize it.
When the enemies of liquor came home, like General
Dow, they were for jumping in at once to recover their
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
lost territory. Then sounded the voice of the whisky
politician ; we had just been through a great conflict ; we
were now in a period of reconstruction, and no patriotic
citizen would introduce any irritating question at this
time. And so they waited through 1866, and the people
were drunk, and through 1867, and the people were
drunker, and through 1868, and the people were drunker
still; and in 1869 they called a prohibition convention in
the city of Chicago and launched the Third Party prohi-
bition movement. I am not a Third Party prohibitionist ;
there are some of us who believe that the final triumph
will not come through any one party ; but I pause here to
say this, that if there is any set of men in the United
States who deserve our honor, it is that little handful who
have been true to their convictions for nearly two gener-
ations, and who have been ready, at every election, to
walk up and lose their votes, and run for office, when they
knew that they didn't have a ghost of a chance. It is the
only political party that has paid its own bills instead of
passing the hat around among the interests, with the un-
derstanding that it was to be repaid later by legislation
at the expense of the people. There has never been a
time since 1869 when the Americans went to the polls at
a general election, that they haven't had that question kept
before them; and when we come to the hour of victory,
no little credit will belong to that faithful band who have
kept the question alive all these discouraging years.
Since that time we have moved out into a still larger
field. We began with the fight against the saloons in the
municipalities. Then the idea expanded to the State, and
now it has been enlarged to the idea of national prohi-
bition. We have had a heavy task on our hands since we
undertook to recover the lost ground, for during the time
that the patriots were at the front, the liquor interests
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The Movement Against the Saloon and Social Progress
were at home, massing their forces, digging their en-
trenchments and making their alliances. The first thing
they did was to divide the country into factions. When-
ever you get a moral question, it always divides the peo-
ple into factions. In this case, one was the drinking
and the other the non-drinking faction.
The second thing was the development of the American
saloon. In the beginning liquor was sold at the grocery
store ; but there was no particular place for it as we have
now. But then followed the evolution of our typical
American saloon, a place dedicated simply to the sale of
liquor. It developed the long, stand-up bar and the free
lunch with its highly-spiced food, and also it developed
the back door and the side door.
It also formed alliances with various businesses. We
have come to a time when no man stands before an intel-
ligent audience in the United States of America and tries
to defend the American saloon as an institution that is
essential to the welfare of any community ; but the saloon
reHes upon its alliances. It alHes itself with the corrupt
politician who is always ready to sacrifice the people for
power; with industries, such as wine grape growing and
hop growing; with the trades that they patronize, such
as harness makers and coopers. You know, in the last
campaign in this State, if you wanted to find a saloon-
keeper, you always found him out hiding behind a green
grape vine or a hop pole. They have a way of pushing
these allied interests out to the front and making them
stand the brunt of the attack. And so you find the press
filled with stories of what is going to happen to certain
industries if the people close the saloons. Here in Cali-
fornia, it is the grape growers who bear the brunt of it.
Their attorneys have wept copious tears over what would
happen to our citizens ; they said there were hundreds of
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
industrious people who have put their savings into these
industries. But there is no industry or allied industry
that has any right beyond what is represented by the li-
cense of the saloon-keeper or the brewer. No man can
demand a license as a right; he can ask for it, but the
people have a right to refuse. What does a man get when
he gets a liquor license ? He gets a permit to sell intox-
icating liquors for twelve months, and when that time is
up, he has had everything that he has paid for, and if he
wants to continue the business he must get another license.
In the last forty years the men who have planted grape
vineyards in the State of California have gambled on the
continued moral obtuseness of the citizenship of Cali-
fornia ; and every single wine grape vineyard is an insult
to the people of the State.
Sympathy with them ? Yes ; the same sympathy that I
have with any other tin-horn gambler who gambles and
loses. They are no better than the saloon-keepers. No
man who is willing to make a part of his living out of the
saloon business is any better than the man who makes the
whole of it out of the business.
They sent me a little pamphlet from the Brewers' Pro-
tective Association. I said at the time, it ought never to
have been printed on a modern printing press ; it ought
to have been made in the sign language of the primitive
savage of the stone age. One of the vine growers from
this part of the State wrote and said, "If you vote prohi-
bition this coming November, I shall have no way of dis-
posing of my packing house culls and my weather spoiled
grapes, from which at the present time I derive quite a
little income." The old aborigine.
He called upon us to rally to the polls and save his
packing house culls and his weather spoiled grapes.
What did he care about the saloon culls and liquor spoiled
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The Movement Against the Saloon and Social Progress
homes? Not a thing. That was the sort of argument
that was used here in the State of CaHfornia to pile up a
majority on behalf of the liquor traffic as we now have it
in our commonwealth. And the result was that with
organization, with the accumulation of millions of profits,
and with immigration — for the saloon business of this
country has been tremendously helped by immigration,
they stayed, for the time, the tide against the saloon.
Between the years 1840 and 1860, the Germans alone
came to the number of over three million, and with their
coming the manufacture of beer became one of the great
industries of America. And all this was helped by the
new methods of doing business ; the trust method, and so
on. And that is what we have been up against.
The American people have never yet had conscience
enough to deal with a great moral question as it should
be dealt with, simply because it is right. Let me repeat;
I say you can't show me an instance in the history of the
United States where the American people have done
right simply because it is right. Do you think of any
particular instance? I made that statement once, and
somebody piped up, "We abolished slavery, didn't we?"
Every time that we dealt with that subject we juggled and
temporized with it. We began in the old colonial days ;
Madison was the chief juggler. We juggled again at the
Constitutional Convention. Those men knew that we
were dealing with an evil, and I am glad that some of the
greatest speeches against the institution of slavery were
made in that convention, and were made by representa-
tives from the South. But that document had to be a
compromise, and it wasn't even a brand new compromise.
Five negroes were to be counted as three white men for
purposes of representation. They added as an amend-
ment the stoppage of the African slave trade in twenty
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
years. They were, no doubt, jubilant over that ; but you
can never settle any question definitely and finally until
it is settled right. It wasn't very long before the old
ghost was walking again. Then came 1820, and Henry
Clay, and the Missouri Compromise. There was to be no
slavery north of the thirty-sixth degree, except in the
State of Missouri. Clay had his eye on the Presidential
chair, and probably they had another jubilation. But
you never settle any question until you settle it right.
Then what happened ? The ghost still walked ; the
trouble became more acute. Then came the year 1854,
and the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and squatter
sovereignty ; what we would call local option on the sub-
ject of slavery in the new territory of Kansas and Ne-
braska. The bill passed, and they thought they had settled
it again by that compromise. Every time we dealt with
that question, we compromised and juggled.
Then came the shock of civil war ; the greatest con-
flict that up to that time this blood-stained planet of ours
had ever known. And the great question at the beginning
of that war was whether we should save the Union, and
even Lincoln said he would save the Union with slavery
if he could, without it if he must. Then, as a war neces-
sity, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation; as a war
measure, to cripple the South. If it had not been for the
war, we would have had slavery in this country just as
black and as damnable as ever. I judge by the way people
deal with other evils like the saloon. You know that there
were whole regiments on the point of deserting when the
Emancipation Proclamation was issued; they said they
had enlisted to save the Union, not to save the niggers.
Let us not forget history. Anybody would think, the
way we talk now, that we had had a great revival in
Washington then, but nothing of that sort happened. We
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The Movement Against the Saloon and Social Progress
were fighting for our lives, and we were ready to throw
over anything.
Then somebody said to me once, "We went down and
helped Cuba, didn't we?" Didn't we? Cuba lay within
seventy miles of our southern boundary all the years of
our national existence ; there was hardly a breeze that
blew over that beautiful island that didn't bring a call for
help ; and we did nothing. Once in a while some patriot
would say something in behalf of Cuba, but nothing came
of it. It was recommended that we buy Cuba, but we did
nothing. Once in a while our yellow press would send
a reporter down, and print heart-rending tales of distress ;
but we did nothing. How did we ever come to do any-
thing? It was the question of the Maine. Do you re-
member the beautiful, Christian cry that went up from
one end of the United States to the other — "Remember
the Maine"? It was a yell of elemental hate, not the
conscience of the American people.
Now, my friends, the closing chapter remains to be
written. It will be the story of the final overthrow of the
liquor traffic in this American Republic, and the final tri-
umph of the forces that to-day are against it. It will not
be the work of a single individual, like the signing of the
Emancipation Proclamation ; but it will be the work of the
sovereign people of the nation at the ballot box, who will
declare that such a traffic shall not be permitted by law,
but shall be prohibited by law ; and in these days, when
State after State falls into the prohibition column, headed
by gallant, little Maine ; when even Congress begins to
hear the voice of the American people and has given a
majority in favor of a prohibition measure, and when
every outlook is bright and the news from every conflict
brings new hope to the people, we begin to believe that
we stand in the dawn of a prohibition day.
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Chapter XXI.
THE WOMAN'S CHRISTIAN TEMPERANCE
UNION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS.
BY MRS. BRIDELLE C. H. WASHBURN.
I am sure that in this age of woman's activity, no one
will question woman's place in social progress. I have
been asked to speak especially for the organization that I
represent, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union ;
the mission which it fulfills as well as its place in social
progress.
It has been more than forty years since a strange spirit
fell upon the women of our land, a spirit of uprising and
going forth, and simultaneously it fell upon the women of
some half-dozen different States at once. Those women,
without any preconcerted thought or action, went out
against an established custom in this land ; an established
business, if you please, the organized liquor traffic. These
women were unorganized and unrecognized officially, po-
litically, or even in our churches ; but because of the bap-
tism of the heavenly spirit, as wonderful in many of its
results as the baptism which fell upon the disciples in the
day of Pentecost, these women, after going before God
and asking his leadership, went against the established
liquor business of this nation. Their work in the begin-
ning was simply a reformatory one. They sought to lift
up men and boys who had already gone down under
drink. But they found to their consternation that while
they were getting one man lifted up, a hundred men were
being dragged down ; and they found out that the antag-
onism of the liquor men themselves was great, even
against this work of reform. This movement was called
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The W. C. T. U. and Social Progress
the Woman's Crusade, and women went forth and
pleaded with men engaged in this business to quit the
business, and upon their knees in the saloons of the coun-
try, Hfted up their voices to God for the destruction of
this tremendous evil. Their power was great, and their
prayer was heard, many of the saloons were closed, hun-
dreds of towns and cities closed their saloons and hun-
dreds of men and boys were lifted up. Then the saloon
men rallied, and said, ''What have we been doing, letting
a Httle handful of preaching, fanatical women rob us of
a legal industry?" And they threw open the saloon doors,
and boasted that they could drag down and destroy all
that had been done by the praying women.
So then the women had learned their first hard lesson ;
that organized evil can never be met except with organ-
ized opposition, and so the Woman's Christian Temper-
ance Union was organized ; and since that time, that little
handful has grown to be a vast and mighty army, more
than three hundred thousand strong in our own land, well
organized, well disciplined, well led, and with more than
forty different departments of work. It reaches out into
every avenue of reform, and there is no vice to-day prey-
ing upon the home or the social or national life that has
not long since been interfered with by this tremendously
powerful organization of the Christian women of Amer-
ica.
We found that it was not enough to reform people
while the destroyer was uncontrolled. We first tried to
get hold of educational organizations, to get hold of the
youth and the children; but we were so untaught our-
selves that progress was slow. Then Mary H. Hunt, of
Boston, stood before a great audience — and she was a
well-known educationalist and splendid philanthropist of
that city — and she said, "I will tell you what we must do ;
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
we must champion the teaching of scientific temperance
truths in our public schools, where our twenty million
children shall be taught the fundamental truths regarding
the effects of alcohol on the human system." When she
said that, many, even among the friends of reform, said,
"You cannot do it" ; but she said, "It shall be done."
That became the work of our national organization,
and as a result of that work, in every State of the Union
and in all the territories, scientific temperance instruction
has been taught in our public schools for more than
twenty years, and many of the educators and reformers
of both Europe and America have said that had the Wo-
man's Christian Temperance Union accomplished nothing
else but the placing of this teaching in the public schools,
it would have done more than had ever been done before.
This paved the way for the final abolition of the liquor
traffic.
We found that our girls and boys were unprotected by
law. We found conditions that we had never dreamed of
in our legislatures, and laws upon our statute books that
we had never dreamed were there. Neither had the good
men of this country. Do you know that the Woman's
Christian Temperance Union of California was the first
organization that made a systematic effort for the protec-
tion of the girls of California? Do you know that when
our State organization sent their legislative representative
to Sacramento, they found that there was no protection
for the girl in the State of California after she had
reached the age of ten years? When we found that out,
our women really thought that all they had to do was to
present the matter before the legislature and it would be
righted at once. But they had to fight every step of the
way. Public sentiment was against them. There was
fear and alarm among the members of the legislature, and
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The W. C. T. U. and Social Process
<b'
the women had to work year after year to have the age
of consent raised, first to twelve years, then to fourteen,
then to sixteen, and then to eighteen.
We found, too, that compromise with the Hquor traffic
always meant failure. We learned by careful investiga-
tion all over the United States and in every nation,
that the higher we raised the liquor license, the greater
the traffic. We found that the whole license system was
wrong in theory and wrong in practice. Why, you know
that women are not called very good financiers; they are
not expected to use very much judgment regarding these
matters. But, friends, they soon learned this one thing;
that if you tax a man five hundred dollars for the priv-
ilege of selling strong drink for one year, he is duty
bound to sell five hundred dollars more drink than he
would have to sell if you didn't tax him a cent. We soon
found that high licenses increased consumption because
of the increased effort to sell and induce consumption.
So we began to work, not for a compromise with the
liquor traffic, but for the total aboHtion of it. This is to
be brought about by permeating society everywhere, get-
ting into our public schools, our churches, into individual
lives, into home life, and to that end we have worked per-
sistently and patiently and well.
The result has been the co-operation of all good men
and women everywhere in securing the best laws for the
protection of our homes and our children and the ad-
vancement of every needed reform measure.
The work was a wonderful development for woman-
hood itself. I believe that the Woman's Christian Tem-
perance Union, an organization composed entirely of
women, has done more to develop the womanhood of
our land than all things else put together. Woman was
brought face to face, in that organization, with the fact
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
that she had a personal responsibility to God and an
equally personal responsibility to her fellow man. She
found herself; and so in this organization women went
to work. At the beginning of our work there was only
one State in the Union that had a prohibitory law, and
that was stalwart, old Maine away on the northeastern
coast. We had hardly heard of its law or of its work-
ing; the people were unfamiliar with it. Nine-tenths of
the people didn't know there was such a law. Then began
the agitation which has resulted, as you know, in the total
abolition of the sale of liquor in eighteen States of this
Union, and there are five more that are to consider the
question again later on. So you see that there are eight-
een that have already voted for it, and five more which
are to vote in 1915 and 1916. You see the wonderful
progress that has been made against the liquor traffic, and
not only against the liquor traffic, but against all its at-
tendant vices and evils.
As Doctor Gaudier has told you, we soon learned that a
large per cent of the crime committed in this country is
due to the liquor traffic. We soon learned that the jails
and penitentiaries and poor-hotises are being crowded to
overflowing because of the curse and blight of the liquor
traffic. I want to say right here that the Woman's Chris-
tian Temperance Union, from its very inception, has al-
ways stood against compromise with the liquor traffic.
As our late national president, Mrs. Stephens, said, the
Woman's Christian Temperance Union is anti-saloon, and
not only that, but anti-brewery and anti-distillery, and
anti-the whole liquor business; and that is what the
Woman's Christian Temperance Union has stood for
from the very inception, and it still stands for the same
principles.
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The W. C. T. U. and Social Progress
When, as an organization, we have tried to obtain legis-
lation which we have desired, we have never been dis-
couraged by apparent defeat. We were persistent in our
efforts until we gained the very thing that we desired.
Never once in the history of the Woman's Christian
Temperance Union has it ever temporized or compro-
mised with the thing that we know to be absolutely wrong.
The leaders in this reform were called visionary. Do
you know, my friends, never has a reform been accom-
plished in this world that some man or woman wasn't a
man or woman of vision — not visionary, but men and
women of vision. And they have proved themselves to be
the most practical men and women in the world. So we
have stood for high ideals in social progress and reform
all these years.
Now, friends, we, here in the State of California,
and I mean especially the women of California, what are
we standing for in the State of California? I believe that
the women of California, as well as of the other States in
the Union, stand for social progress. I believe that woman
is the natural conservator of human life, and when-
ever any evil confronts the home as a destroyer, woman's
influence is against that evil, whatever it may be. In all
history, when men have gone out to war and have slain
each other in battle, woman has gone to care for the
wounded, and has brought spices to embalm the dead.
She has always been the conservator of human life. Wom-
an has always stood against that which detracts from
the efficiency of the boy or girl; womanhood has always
stood against that which detracts from the safety of the
home, and so the Woman's Christian Temperance Union
and good women everywhere stand against the legahzed
liquor traffic and all its attendant evils.
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
I want to say just a word for one of the latest compila-
tions on this question, a compendium of temperance truth
incorporating the teaching that is being given in the pub-
lic schools of our land. I want to say something about
the use of alcohol in moderation. We find that the main
defense of the liquor traffic is made on this basis. The
following is from the Saturday Evening Post :
"The following incident recently occurred in New York
City when Mr. George Perkins, of the New York Life
Insurance Company, was giving a dinner to the directors
of the big New York life insurance companies, and when
the proprietor of the hotel handed to him the menu for
his approval, he crossed out all liquors, including all
wines. A protest was made against this omission, and
this is what he replied : 'We discriminate against the use
of these by our policy holders ; it is but fair that we should
abide by our own rule.' "
You know that very recently liquors have been declared
against by the heads of the royal families in Europe. We
know that King George has declared against the use of
intoxicating liquors, including wine and beer, and that
he himself has become a total abstainer, and uses neither
wine nor beer. We know that Kaiser Wilhelm has de-
clared against the use of intoxicating liquor, and no
longer permits it to be served in the royal household ; and
this includes wine and beer. If wine is a harmless and
safe temperance drink, why did these men, with their
great power and influence, declare against their use ?
I have a great deal of evidence in regard to the mod-
erate use of the lighter intoxicating liquors and their ef-
fects, not only upon the human system, but upon crime
and inebriacy. I could give you the names of authorities
on this subject had I the time, men well known in the
scientific world, who declare that the continual use of
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The W. C. T. U. and Social Progress
these milder liquors is really of greater damage to the hu-
man race than the spasmodic use of the stronger spirits,
for the reason that their continuous use brings about a
sort of deterioration of the human system, and creates a
like deterioration of the moral forces, and they are, there-
fore, dangerous.
I want to refer for just a moment to the connection
between drink and crime. Lord Kitchener said that in
India, with a diminution of drinking, the number of
court martials was reduced, and that in India, in 1907,
there had not been a single court martial of a total ab-
stainer. In the British postal service there are more
than thirty-one thousand men. They are men who must
be keen and alert, and no man with his brains befogged
by any amount of alcohol can remain in the service. In
1907-8-9, the number of dismissals for intemperance was
thirty-six per cent of the total number of dismissals.
What do the prisons reveal? The late Colonel Mc-
Hardin, chairman of the Prison Commission, said that he
did not know of anything that could take the place of
strong drink as a crime-producer. Sixty per cent of the
long-sentence criminals had been drinking before the
commission of the crime, and were somewhat affected by
it at the time the crime was committed. One investigation
showed that something like seventy-six per cent of the
criminals had been more or less under the influence of
alcohol at the time that they committed the crimes for
which they were imprisoned.
I might go on and on, but what is the use? We all
know the connection between the liquor traffic and the
courts. We all know, through the systematic and deter-
mined investigation of the Woman's Christian Temper-
ance Union, that the tax-payers of this country are being
burdened by taxes caused by the tremendous amount of
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
crime and pauperism produced by the awful curse of
drink.
I must close, though I might go on much longer. I
hope you all understand what our organization stands for.
It has grown in influence and effectiveness from a little
handful of unrecognized women to a mighty power.
There is not a single State legislature that has not long
since felt the weight of the hand of the Woman's Chris-
tian Temperance Union. I wish, when you get to the fair
grounds over here, that you would visit our national ex-
hibit, in the Educational Building, and you will find on
exhibit there some of the facts which we have discovered
as the result of these long years of study. And you will
find there one of the most unique exhibits on the expo-
sition ground, a petition written by Frances E. Willard
years ago and circulated in every civilized country in the
world, with the signatures of millions. There is about a
mile and a half of canvas required to record these names,
and you will see the different rolls of this canvas from
each nation. And this petition asks every government in
the world to abolish the liquor traffic. The interest
aroused by that petition has never ceased, from that day
to this. I hope that you will go and look at that unique
exhibit that our national organization has so kindly sent
to the exposition.
I might, indeed, well take much of the afternoon, and
should have been obliged to do so had I prepared half
of what might be said as to the place of woman in social
progress. I have only touched upon the effect of the
Woman's Christian Temperance Union on social prog-
ress, and I hope that you will all remember that this or-
ganization, composed of the consecrated womanhood of
this nation, stands against everything that threatens the
home, that threatens your children; it stands against
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The W. C. T. U. and Social Progress
everything that threatens your public schools and the
morals of the people in general; and we stand ready to
co-operate with all good men and women of all organ-
izations or any organization for the overthrow of the
liquor traffic and its attendant evils, and for every reform
for the betterment of the human race and the advance-
ment of social progress.
279
Chapter XXIL
SIDE LIGHTS ON THE MOVEMENT AGAINST
THE SALOON.
BY GUY WADSWORTH.
I want to tell you about a little trip that I made to
Utah in the interest of prohibition. I was invited to go
into the State during the latter part of February, to help
in the campaign. The legislature had determined to pass
a statutory prohibition bill. I spoke in a dozen or more
different towns in Utah, in two or three Mormon taber-
nacles, was in one place introduced by a Mormon, spoke
in many Mormon churches, and I was fully convinced that
the rank and file of the voters in Utah were in favor of
State-wide prohibition. I was present at a meeting of the
legislature. The senate had already voted, and the as-
sembly considered the bill the day I was there, and I
heard a very interesting and illuminating debate. They
tried, as they generally do, to kill the bill, to make it
ridiculous by all kinds of amendments ; but the temper-
ance people were able to vote all the amendments down.
I was impressed by the amendment one man offered,
which dealt with the subject of compensating the liquor
dealers of the State. He read a very well drawn up
amendment and argued on that side of the question; but
when he had finished, one of the members rose and said,
"Mr. Speaker, I believe there are some good things in that
bill, but I think I can change it to make it better still." He
moved, as an amendment, that right after a certain word
in the original amendment, these words should be added,
"That whenever the liquor dealers should have com-
280
Side Lights on the Movement Against the Saloon
pensated the widows and the insane and the paupers and
the other unfortunates who had suffered through the
liquor business," then he was in favor of compensating
the Hquor men. The result of that amendment was that
when the original amendment to compensate was put to
a vote, I don't think even the man who had proposed it,
voted for it; not a sound did I hear. But every one ap-
parently voted, No. So all the amendments were voted
down, and finally, about six o'clock at night, they passed
the bill, forty to five. It looked very much like prohibition
in Utah. Then, two days later, the senate concurred a
little amendment having been made, by a vote of sixteen
to two. So unless my mathematics are crooked, it was
an eight-to-one vote both in the senate and in the as-
sembly, and people felt joyful all over the State. The
very day that this bill passed the assembly, Governor
Alexander of Idaho had signed the bill for prohibition
in that State, so apparently everything was looking fine.
The governor had agreed to consider the question, and
give his decision in plenty of time ; but you remember
what he did. He waited until it was too late for the legis-
lature to pass the bill over his veto, and then vetoed it;
and he did a worse thing still. The people had depended
upon the statutory prohibition as a temporary makeshift.
They had an initiative and referendum bill to enable
them to initiate a constitutional prohibition amendment
for the State of Utah. The governor knew about that,
and about the last thing he did was to veto the initiative
and referendum bill, which would have enabled them to
initiate a constitutional prohibition amendment for the
State of Utah. He said that he had received all the hon-
ors from the State of Utah he expected, and that here-
after he was going to devote his attention to other things.
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
I think he probably will, for the people in Utah are very
indignant.
Now, as to Idaho ; you see, I have forty-eight States
to talk about, so I can go on for a considerable time, if
necessary. The history of the movement in Idaho is very
interesting. You remember that the thirtieth day of last
June the Democratic party, and the Progressive and Re-
publican parties in Idaho, all three, vied with one an-
other to see which would be the quickest to get a prohi-
bition plank in the platform; and they all voted it in.
So when the legislature met this winter, they passed an
enabling act, so that they can vote on constitutional pro-
hibition in Idaho, in 1916. But the victory in Washing-
ton and Oregon, both of which States border on Idaho,
gave the Idaho people the idea that it would be best for
them to pass a statutory prohibition bill which would go
into effect, January 1, 1916, in order that when pro-
hibition went into effect that day in Washington and
Oregon, Idaho should not immediately become the dump-
ing-ground for those States. So that is what they did,
and the very day that I was in the assembly in Utah,
Governor Alexander signed the bill which caused Idaho
to become a prohibition State by statute.
There are people all over the country, who, if they
were asked how many prohibition States there are, would
make a wild guess. I was making a speech in the Sunday
school at Long Beach, and I asked the people in the Sun-
day school to tell me how many States in the Union had
voted dry, and the superintendent said, nine. I had to let
him down easy, but I had to tell him before I got through,
that he was a little out of date ; that since September 22,
ten States had voted dry, and in every case the law will
go into effect, except in Utah. In Utah the people are
just simply mad, in the American sense of that word;
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Side Lights on the Movement Against the Saloon
but it is only a matter of two years. They are absolutely
helpless at present ; they can't get an election until after
November 1, 1916. But I want to ask you people to
watch when Utah votes the next time.
I am planning- to leave to-morrow night for Oregon and
Washington, to learn as many lessons as I can up there
for our next campaign in California. Surely California
can't afford to be behind Oregon and Washington in its
power to attract the finest people of America. When the
entire Pacific Coast is dry, where, under the shining sun,
will you find anything like these three Pacific Coast
States ?
283
Chapter XXIIL
THE TRIUMPH OF THE "DRY," AND SOCIAL
PROGRESS.
BY A. J. WALLACE.
I arrived in California on a certain Friday night, and
on the following Sunday evening spoke at a union meet-
ing for the W. C. T. U., so I began life in California very
fairly. I thought then that the W. C. T. U. was an or-
ganization that would not only accomplish a great deal,
but that it was on a firm foundation and was building for
permanency; but in these later days I find that there are
influences digging at the very foundation of that organ-
ization and planning its overthrow, for I see nothing for
the W. C. T. U. to do in California after things have
moved as rapidly for the next two or three years as they
have in the last six months. For when the liquor business
is overthrown, what on earth is that organization going
to do? As I told Mrs. Washburn, her organization was
doomed to overthrow; but she insisted that there would
be some good things to do even then.
A long time ago on the banks of the Red River a few
of us were living, and my brother and I were conducting
a store. We put up a building and got a man to advance
a sum to run the business, and a little while after we
were established, somebody wanted to bring a saloon in.
And I tried to convince that little community, going out
among the farms and getting up a petition, that a saloon
shouldn't be allowed. When the man who provided the
funds to stock our store learned what I was doing, he said
to me in a very gracious and nice way, "Now, Mr. Wal-
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The Triumph of the ''Dry" and Social Progress
lace, of course that business is right in your hands, and
you will have to be the judge of what you do ; but I would
like to suggest to you that in business it is a good thing
to let liquor matters alone." He took the position that
so many men have taken ever since, that it isn't good
policy to interfere with the liquor business if you want to
succeed in your own business.
I remember in that little town the next year we were
all gathered in our little schoolhouse, and the predom-
inant question was that of liquor. If you have ever lived
in a small neighborhood, you know how it is ; how won-
derfully intense you can get. We forgot all the rest of
the world, and never in a big city have I seen such ex-
citement as in that little schoolhouse. I remember that
a big man, white with anger, invited me to go outside. I
didn't go ; I stayed right there in that institution of pub-
lic instruction. He was bigger than I, and it was really
a cold winter's day ; besides, he had three or four brothers
right there who had come originally from the lumber
camps, and I kept on staying where I was.
But things changed by and by. North Dakota got the
notion that liquor didn't help, and I remember sending
back a contribution — a small one — to help make the fight
against liquor. And about a year ago, in the absence of
the governor, it came to me to welcome the representatives
of North Dakota at the time that they selected the site
for their State building at the Panama-Pacific Exposition.
I listened with unusual interest to what these representa-
tives had to say, because they came from my old home
State, and one of them said, ''North Dakota has the high-
est standing for pro rata wealth of any State in the
Union." He didn't say that North Dakota was the wealth-
iest State ; but he did say that the average of wealth in
that State, that had been without liquor for a long time,
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
was the greatest of any State in the Union ; and I rejoiced
in that fact. I remember in the very early days that one
of the first things we did was to build a court house and
jail, and we were all taxed for it. Do you know I heard
lately that there is nobody to occupy that jail and court-
house that we helped to build. You can tell what the rea-
son is. Mr. Gaudier told you of a county in this State of
which one-eighth was wet, and that wet part contributed
six times as many prisoners to the county jail as all the
rest of the county. That is the way it was with this
county in North Dakota,
I wish I could sing a psean of triumph for the things
that have been accomplished in these last few months
and years in this cause for which we stand. At the be-
ginning of things there was old Neal Dow in Maine ; and
if that old man could have lived a little longer on this
earth, how triumphant his closing days would have been.
I don't know how soon we are going to have our final
triumph; I am no prophet. But I am almost taken off
my feet in these late months by the way things are going.
It took a long time to win two or three States ; but what
has happened since? Why, last fall all over this country
we had campaigns. As usual, we were told we were fool-
ish. What happened ? Why, five States went dry in No-
vember. Then we rested a little, and before we knew it,
the legislatures were in session in January, and it ap-
peared that not only by the vote of the people, but by
legislative action the same thing could be done. And in a
very short time in 1915, five more States, through their
legislatures, went dry, and the governors of four of them
signed the bill. One of the governors thought he could
stay the wheels of progress, but he will fail as absolutely
as did King Canute, and we will make Utah dry.
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The Triumph of the "Dry'' and Social Progress
I am wondering how these men feel who have always
sneered at our forces and told us that we were fanatics;
that we ought to wear skirts, and didn't belong among
real men. I wonder what they thought a few months ago
when the question came up in Washington, and a ma-
jority— not two-thirds, but still a majority — of the mem-
bers of Congress cast their vote in favor of submitting
to the people of this country the question of national pro-
hibition.
That means not local, but national prohibition for this
great country of ours ; and every distiller and every
brewer and every saloon man and Royal Arch man in the
whole country knew when he read that vote that he had
come pretty near the end of his rope, and that some day
there would be a two-thirds majority and the question
would go to the people, and that will mean the end of
the liquor business all over the country.
I am not going to make a speech ; but only rejoice with
you in things done, and take comfort and courage in
starting afresh to do the things that remain to be done.
I can't understand some things. The progress is such
that it is really exciting. I don't know what they are go-
ing to do in Europe. I am sure that old England will be
doomed if beer and stout and ale no longer give strength
to her population ! What on earth can England do with-
out beer, after a thousand years ? It would seem to be
an impossibility. My father taught me not to swear ; but
I believe to-day he would let me say, "By George, Eng-
land's going dry," when he saw Lloyd George and King-
George coming out against liquor.
Lloyd George said, on March 2, that liquor was doing
more to destroy the English population than all the Ger-
man submarines in existence. He lived twenty-nine days
longer, and then he spoke again, and he said, ''England
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
has three great foes : Germany, Austria, and liquor, and
the greatest of these is Hquor." I beHeve in God ; I be-
Heve he cares for his people. He never sleeps nor for-
gets any man or any nation ; and standing as a finite
human in awe and amazement at the horrors of Europe,
I am unable to comprehend or see any right at all, as I
think of what is going on there; but there have come
gleams of light from somewhere in these later days, and
I am wondering if the Almighty, hopeless and almost
despairing of his children, is allowing the destroying
annies to ravage the country in order to teach them that
there is a greater evil than war, and that is liquor; and
teach them that they must give up their dependence on
liquor and crush the liquor business and so, out of the
horrors of this bloody warfare may come this reforma-
tion of the liquor traffic, this overcoming of things evil,
and the freeing of the various peoples of the whole world.
Think of Russia, half-civilized Russia ! Have you ever
pondered the Russian serf, and read about him? You
know what a poor, narrow life he lives. Go and hear the
woman who spoke in this building yesterday, Mary Antin ;
let her tell her story of Russian life. Think of what you
have read and what you know, and remember that in that
cold region live men of narrowed lives and restricted out-
look, and in their ignorance they have naturally depended
upon vodka, and vodka has made them stupid and be-
fogged and dull. What has happened? You couldn't
have dreamed it in your wildest dreams ; it wouldn't have
occurred to you that it could have been accomplished in
a century ; yet in the last six months they tell us that the
use of Hquor has been forbidden in Russia. It seems im-
possible, yet from governmental reports, from the report
of the Minister of Finance of Russia, we are told that
already Russia is tremendously the gainer. The Minister
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The Triumph of the "Dry" and Social Progress
of Finance reports that they have lost two hundred and
thirty-five milHon dollars by giving up this liquor traffic;
but he goes on to say that the real gain is great ; the ad-
vance in the people is marvelous ; that there are benefits
is apparent on every hand.
A writer in one of our trade organs has said just
recently that he had had a conversation with a banker
from Russia, and this banker was interested in the coal
mines, and his companies lost sixty per cent of their
men to the army ; then they employed other men until
they had fifty per cent of their former force; but the
use of liquor was stopped; it was given up entirely, and
the result was that with only fifty per cent of their nor-
mal number of employees they were doing forty per cent
more work than they ever did before.
The women of the W. C. T. U., and men like Doctor
Gaudier and others have gone all through the country
trying to stop the drink business, not wholly from a moral
viewpoint, nor even from a commercial and business
standpoint, but because drink is destroying the manhood
of our men and destroying the women, and making men
and women by the million inefficient ; and then here comes
this instance of the greater efficiency in the men, the great
material gain, simply because they have given up liquor
drinking, and have thus become more skillful and indus-
trious.
We know what the evil effect of drinking is upon the
American ; but we never drank quite as the Russians did.
Yet out of the war, in just these few months, has come
this great redemption for Russia.
You know what France has done. An actor once said
that if the United States went dry, half the population
would move away and go to France, where they could
have freedom. Now, there isn't very much freedom of
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that kind even in France. I am afraid that poor actor
will have to stay in the United States even after we do
go dry.
All these great men in England, Kitchener, and Lloyd
George, and the king, have given orders that no liquor
of any kind is to be used in their houses during the war.
After the war is over, will they go back to the good, old
times? What could they say for themselves if they
did? They can't do it. King George has given orders
that no wine is to be used in his household during the
war. King George would stand pilloried before the
people of the world if, after the war, he should go back
to the drink habit in his household. He dare not do it.
He comes of too good a stock; he is the grandson of too
fine a woman to do such a thing.
I heard Lloyd George talk in the House of Commons
three or four years ago, and I want to tell you that for
years I had spoken of him before audiences as one of the
two or three biggest men in the world, because of what
I knew of what he was doing for humanity. I heard him
talk on his insurance bill, when they were all trying to
pull it to pieces, and he explained that bill as simply and
clearly as though they had been school children; and it
was so plain, that only those who were determined to
take the other view could think otherwise than as he
thought. That is the kind of man, the biggest man in the
country, who is trying to get King George and Kitchener
to agree to actual prohibition in the British Empire. It is
a great day for the world when such a man is in power
in such a country.
Saskatchewan has ordered the bars closed, and in Can-
ada the Parliament meets in a little while, and the ques-
tion is going to come up before them when they meet;
and knowing, as I do, how loyal they are to the British
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Empire, I believe they will readily adopt in Canada the
principles adopted across the sea.
Some years ago, when I was in England, I went to a
great Handel festival in the Crystal Palace. There was
a magnificent chorus of four thousand voices and five
hundred instruments. I have never heard anything like
it. They gave us ''Judas Maccabseus" ; and the music,
representing his triumphant return, after the overthrow
of his enemies, rang out magnificently. And I am here
to say to you to-day that it is time for us to get out the
musical instruments, and raise our voices, and we will
sing together a song of triumph, such as Miriam sang,
when the Royal Arch people of that day, who wanted to
enslave the Israelites, were overthrown — and that was a
cold-water victory even on that occasion. We will sing,
and they will hear our song all over the world. We will
shout from the peaks of the Sierras to the watchers on
the tallest pines of old Maine, and a score of interior
States will catch the melody, and mountain and sea shall
give volume and resonance to the song, and the heavens
and the earth shall unite in the chorus of old "Jehovah
has triumphed ; his people are free."
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Chapter XXIV.
FAIR LEGISLATION AND THE LIQUOR
TRAFFIC.
BY D. M. GANDIER.
There are one or two things to which my attention has
been called lately, to which I would like to call your at-
tention. I don't know when I have heard so much talk
about the necessity of being fair in legislation against the
liquor traffic as I have heard in the last four months, par-
ticularly the last three months. I believe that all legisla-
tion should be fair. I have, however, no particular inter-
est about being fair to the saloon. I don't know that the
word "fair" has any application except to people. We
ought to be fair to the saloon-keeper, but we ought also to
be fair to all the people of the State. And when we think
of this question of what legislation is fair and what is not
fair, we have got to be careful if we don't get our thinking
mixed. I would Hke to think of the saloon, in its relation
to the democracy, in order that I may know what legis-
lation is right and what not.
We have what we call a local option law. I don't like
the word 'iocal option," because I have never believed in
local option in the usual sense of that word. I am a thor-
ough democrat. I believe in the right of every individual
and community to govern itself in all things that do not
hurt the larger community. Democracy means that the
worth of every individual is recognized and that we are
not going to interfere with personal liberty except when
it is necessary to maintain the higher civil liberty. I have
a right to do as I please so far as government is con-
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Fair Legislation and the Liquor Traffic
cerned, if what I please does not hurt any one else. But
the moment what I please to do hurts you, your rights
must be considered as well as mine, and then my per-
sonal liberty yields to the higher civil liberty, and I am
willing that government should come in and say, "You
shall so live together that you shall not hurt one another."
So my personal liberty must always be limited to the
things that don't hurt other people. I think the same
thing is true of every little village. I think our govern-
ment ought to permit every little community to govern
itself absolutely in those things that don't hurt the com-
munity round about. If it wants to have a baseball
ground, I don't think the State ought to interfere, so
long as they use it properly. We should not compel them
or prevent them. That is a local affair ; it doesn't hurt
the rest of the county. I believe the community should
have a right to do as it pleases in all things that do not
hurt the larger territory. The moment that a community
wants to do something that hurts the territory round
about, the sovereign power of the State has a right to step
in and say, "No, you must be limited there." That seems
to me to be the A B C of democracy. That is the basis
for the government of our State of California ; our cities
are allowed to govern themselves in things that are local,
and so are our counties ; but the State holds the power
over all of saying that in questions that affect the State,
the State shall decide.
I want you to apply that principle to the saloon ques-
tion, and I will start by asking a question. Will anybody
claim that closing the saloon in one town hurts the rest
of the county? It is almost universally admitted to-day
that the saloon is a nuisance ; some of us think more and
some less, but everybody admits that it is a nuisance or
may become so. Even the Royal Arch admits that and
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
advocates regulation. If we talked about regulating our
grocery stores as they say the saloons ought to be regu-
lated, we should have a revolution. I submit, then, that
shutting the saloon out of one community doesn't hurt the
larger territory. They haven't any saloons in Palo Alto,
and there are lots of them in San Jose in the same county.
Does closing the saloons in Palo Alto hurt San Jose? I
never heard anybody suggest such a thing. It is almost
unanimously admitted that closing the saloons in Palo
Alto didn't hurt the rest of the county. I submit, there-
fore, that Palo Alto has a right to close her saloons and
keep them so, and that it would be an outrage if the rest
of the county should step in and force the saloons back
into Palo Alto. Since closing them didn't hurt the rest
of the county, Palo Alto has a right to that measure of
self-government.
Did keeping the saloons in San Jose hurt Palo Alto?
Some people may say, No. I think I can prove the con-
trary. I can prove this ; that the people in Palo Alto are
paying taxes to support the saloons of San Jose. I don't
think we have many intelligent citizens to-day who deny
that the saloon furnishes a large proportion of the in-
mates for the county jail and county almshouse and
county prison. In the first two years after this came
about, one-eighth of the population that was wet kept
six times as many people in the county jail as the part
that was dry. Who paid for that, the one-eighth? No,
the whole county was taxed to feed the prisoners and
support the almshouse. San Jose has ninety odd saloons,
and they are furnishing men to the county jail and county
hospital and county almshouse. The county is the unit
of taxation, and the whole county is helping to pay the
bill. The whole county, therefore, has a right to have a
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Fair Legislation and the Liquor Traffic
voice in saying whether or not these saloons shall stay
there.
Let me follow that up a little farther. San Jose is the
county seat. That makes it the social center, the commer-
cial center, the educational center, and the legal center.
If you have ninety-six saloons in the legal, commercial,
social, and educational center of the county, doesn't that
affect all the county ? The people in the country are send-
ing their young people to school there; men are coming
in with their teams to do business, and the men and
women of the whole county go there. I submit that the
people in the rest of the county have just about as much
interest in the saloons in San Jose as the people in San
Jose have. They are affected to a very large extent, and
are injured by them. Therefore the people in the county
as a whole ought to have a voice if they wish. But you
can't reverse that, because putting the saloons out of Palo
Alto didn't hurt the rest of the county; but keeping the
saloons in San Jose did hurt the rest of the county. That
is why the saloon should go, because the saloon is a hurt-
ful and harmful institution — that is why the law should
not work the same both ways. And when we have had
a law that will let the people close the saloons in Palo
Alto, and then we ask for a larger law to enable the peo-
ple to close them in San Jose, it would be an outrage if
we did not put in a clause saying that nobody shall force
the saloons to reopen in Palo Alto. The community has
a right to local self-government only in those things that
do not hurt the larger territory. That is a fundamental
proposition. If we keep that clearly before us, we will
realize that the smallest community has a right to close its
saloons, no matter what the rest of the State does. Any
district that wants to, ought to have that right. On the
other hand, if the whole county wants prohibition, no lit-
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
tie community has a right to have saloons against the will
of the county; and if the whole State wants prohibition,
no city, not even San Francisco, would have a right to
have saloons against the will of the sovereign people of
the State.
This will help you when you meet a lot of people who
are mixed on this subject. It is for this reason that I
stand on the right of local prohibition; and I insist that
no sovereign power has a right to force a nuisance upon
any part of the territory, if that part doesn't want the
nuisance. As a matter of common justice and decency,
it is an outrage to force a nuisance on any community
that doesn't want it. Therefore, we have a right to de-
mand that every unit shall be given the right to get rid of
its saloons, and we are not in favor of a law that would
reverse that position. I believe that in standing on that
basis we are not only logical, but that we are adhering to
the fundamental principles of sound democracy; and if
we will keep our thinking clear, we will realize that in
order to be fair to the people, we cannot treat the saloon
in the same way as a schoolhouse or a grocery store, or
any other helpful institution. We are dealing with a
thing which is harmful, and it hasn't the same rights in
the courts of justice and to fair play as legitimate busi-
ness has.
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Chapter XXV.
THE TESTIMONY OF SCIENCE AS TO ALCO-
HOL AND SOCIAL PROGRESS.
BY DAVID STARR JORDAN
After this eloquent discourse of my friend, Mr.
Hughes, I have to give you a cold-blooded account of al-
cohol as seen by the light of science. You know that
alcohol is a substance that doesn't exist in nature, but is
made by the decomposition of sugar, and the sugar will
not be decomposed unless there are minute organisms in
it that tear it all to pieces, and under these circumstances,
carbonic acid gas and alcohol are formed.
There was a great deal said not long ago of the dis-
covery of a professor in a Methodist college that alcohol
was food up to a quarter of a teaspoonful, with water;
but that is not of much value to the person who drinks
alcohol for the kick it gives, for all the rest is a poison.
And it is a sham. That is, it gives feeHngs that don't
correspond with the actual facts. The fundamental efifect
of alcohol is to teach the nervous system to lie, and after
it once gets to bringing false messages to the brain, both
the nervous system and the brain get to be liars, and that
habit grows on them.
Alcohol that is left over after you have digested a
quarter of a teaspoonful, is a poison. One of the greatest
scientists of our time said that if alcohol were a newly-
discovered drug from a German laboratory, every civil-
ized nation would prohibit its use as it has already pro-
hibited the far more valuable drug, cocaine, more valu-
able and less dangerous. People do acquire the cocaine
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
habit, but mostly people who had the alcohol habit before.
There is far less likelihood of acquiring the cocaine habit
than there is the alcohol habit.
Of course, alcohol injures the liver, producing a pecu-
liar condition of the liver; but I will not describe that.
It has been called a "hob-nailed liver" ; that is, the differ-
ent cells become swollen and modified and hard. It also
affects the kidneys. The kidneys are to carry off poison,
but they get drunk on alcohol, and this tends to bring on
a disease of the kidneys. But these are relatively minor
things.
One of the things that has lately been discovered by
Metschnikopf, the great Russian physicist, is that we
have in the human body little blood cells — not the red
ones, but others — that act as living guardians, and go
around in the blood, and when they find any httle organ-
isms there, they kill them and devour them. They are
police to keep out intruders ; the germs of tuberculosis,
or pneumonia that are present in the air all the winter
long; and sometimes when there is a congested place,
pneumonia comes on. A cold doesn't generally result in
pneumonia or consumption, but it gives a congested sur-
face for the germs to grow, and these phagocytes, as they
are called, should be on hand. ''Devourers of cells" is the
meaning of the word in Greek. They devour the germs
of these diseases, and a great many of these disease germs
are devoured in this way. We are constantly exposed to
tuberculosis, but in most cases the phagocytes get in their
work and destroy the germs. In the same way we are
often exposed to measles, or whooping cough, or small
pox ; there are many of these infectious diseases ; they
may be carried by foul air or water, or carried by mos-
quitoes or flies. Typhus is carried by lice, which infest
every army. Mexico is full of typhoid fever because
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Testimony of Science as to Alcohol and Social Progress
Mexico is full of lice and bed bugs, because they are hav-
ing war and haven't time to attend to these things.
The phagocytes are busy destroying these things, and
we should be very grateful. Alcohol paralyzes them ; they
are paralyzed by it and don't do their work. So when you
invite your friend to drink, you should say to him, ''Come,
let us paralyze all our phagocytes." So long as the influ-
ence of liquor lasts, a person is more likely to be infected
by some disease.
A very late discovery that is due to Professor Saleeby
of Cornell, shows that alcohol is what they call a race
poison. That is, every human being was originally the
product of two germ cells mingled together, the germ
cells from the father and the mother, and these unite,
bringing together the hereditary material from both sides,
and the little embryo grows. Alcohol paralyzes these
cells also, and people who drink moderately or extrava-
gantly— all drink is immoderate, it is better not to drink
any of it — for people who drink are likely to have these
germ cells paralyzed, and sometimes ruined, and this, of
course, brings about sterility ; the embryo doesn't grow.
Sometimes distortion or a defective nervous system re-
sults, and there are a great many epileptics and feeble-
minded produced because these germ cells were injured
but not destroyed. A large amount of sterility comes
from the use of alcohol, and by experimenting with
smaller animals they have found that by a sufficient
amount of alcohol, they can damage nearly all of the
germ cells. Just as a young animal that is fed alcohol
becomes stupid and doesn't grow, so it is with the germ
cells themselves, for they are in intimate connection with
the nervous system. So we speak of a race poison, slow
developing and terrible. It is like syphilis, because it
can be passed from one generation to another until it
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
runs out. This new count against alcohol is a very seri-
ous one.
The damage done by alcohol is in proportion to the
amount used. Beer has less alcohol than the distilled
liquors, where the alcohol is brought out separately from
the water. They have a very much higher percentage,
and so do a good many of the patent medicines. Peruna
and Mrs. Pinkham's Compound, and a variety of others,
have their effect, whatever it may be, because they con-
tain alcohol. The other ingredients are largely put in
for coloring. In fact, nearly all these advertised cures
for nervous and other difficulties, belong to one or the
other of two classes : Either they are sugar and water,
very harmless and very expensive, or else they are made
of whisky and some coloring matter. A great many good
men, including some of the Methodist ministers ordained
in the earlier days you have heard about just now,
thought these bitters would do them a great deal of good
where whisky would do them harm. But you can always
drink water, and if that doesn't suit, you can use White
Rock water, which sparkles like champagne.
Drunkenness is merely the effort of nature to throw
off this poison. There are many varieties of drunken-
ness; the joyous kind, like the man who was seen with
his head in an ash barrel, singing a song, although even
the dogs knew that he wasn't happy, though he insisted
that he was. Then there is the grouchy drunk and the
emetic drunk and the savage drunk and the stupid drunk,
and then there is the drunk who imagines that he is more
witty than he ever was before. But it is all drunkenness,
and the more one drinks, the longer one continues this
sort of thing, the more he fails to throw it off, and the
nervous system grows weaker and weaker until he can
drink a good deal without throwing it off. But that
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Testimony of Science as to Alcohol and Social Progress
doesn't show that he is really not injured by it. It
wouldn't be an evidence of sensitiveness or health if a
man should burn his finger so many times that at last
he could no longer feel it.
The principal evil effect is, of course, on the nerves.
You know what delicate machinery we have in the brain ;
it is the finest thing ever put together in the way of ma-
chinery; millions of parts all joined together in such
marvelous fashion as to give us the greatest wonder that
we know of in the universe, the wonder of human con-
sciousness, through which we know something of God's
world about us; and the minute this machinery stops
working, a man doesn't really exist any longer, for when
the brain is gone, everything is gone, and when the brain
is injured, the man is injured. Alcohol injures the brain,
all of it except what is used for food, and that is nearly
all of it, the alcohol itself, the undigested part, the part
that can't be handled in the stomach. The brain is con-
nected with the outside world by a series of nerves that
carry impressions from the eye or the ear or the fingers,
and from them the brain sends out its orders to the dif-
ferent organs.
The story is told of a man who came into his office one
morning and said, "Well, the world looks different to a
man who has had a good drink of brandy and soda in
the morning" ; and one of the clerks said, "Yes, and he
looks different to the world." When a man drinks, the
brain doesn't know how to look at the world, it is con-
fused and doesn't give the proper orders. A man tries
to take both sides of the street. The fact is that alcohol
confuses the brain and leads the nervous system to tell
what is not true.
Now, this condition leaves its mark, and the more you
take, the more you want, until a man is uncomfortable
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without it. Like tobacco, it first creates a disagree-
able impression and leaves the nervous system irri-
tated. Just as v^hen a mosquito bites you, it is a pleasure
to scratch it; but the more you scratch it, the more you
have to. The man who lies back in his chair and enjoys a
smoke feels no better than the ordinary man feels all the
time. He is simply scratching the mosquito bite.
We speak of liquor as a stimulant. It is not, in any
proper sense. It is a nerve depressant. It acts upon the
nerves to reduce their action as well as to confuse it. It
isn't properly a stimulant, but it acts first on the highest
qualities of the nerve and brain ; it loosens those restraints
and reserves that we build up, what we call character;
those things that prevent us from being a common nui-
sance because you do everything you might do. Those
go first, and then the ordinary, cheaper quahties of a man
come to the surface. One of my German friends has
urged that it has great value to give a loosening up.
That means simply that the reserves that we build up are
weakened, and it lets loose anything of which we think.
So the individual seems to be stimulated ; he is simply
turned loose ; he doesn't care what he says or does. We
could, any of us, be quite a nuisance if we dropped our
ordinary restraint and dignity.
When we take a hen or turkey and put it on the block
and cut off its head, the animal shows greater activity
than it ever did before. There is a loosening up of all
restraint ; the head is gone, and the nerves operate on the
different muscles and the chicken flies around. I have
heard women say, when they were excited, that they acted
like a hen with its head cut off. It is a loosening of all
restraints, and it is also accompanied by a false exalta-
tion ; you think you are feeling better. Coffee does the
same thing, only to a lesser degree. Beer and wine teach
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Testimony of Science as to Alcohol and Social Progress
the nervous system to lie, and just to the extent that you
feel exalted, you feel depressed afterward. You have
that dark-brown taste in the morning, which is just as
natural an effect as the exaltation. With the continued
use of alcohol, the exaltation grows less and less and the
depression greater.
This is the scientific side, as related to man. It has an-
other relation, and that is to society. It is part of our
democratic system to give every man just as much free-
dom as he can use without injury to others. We don't
dictate what time men shall go to bed ; we let them do as
they please. We want to give all the freedom that we
can. But there is a boundary to that kind of freedom,
and that is the boundary of injury to others. Our count
against liquor from the social point of view is that it is
unsanitary, dangerous to the community. Drunken men
are dangerous. You remember that at the time of the
earthquake. General Funston closed all the saloons, and
there was no crime for nearly three months. Then they
were opened, and there was a murder every night. They
weren't cured during that time ; they left town, and when
the town was open again they came back. If you can
arrange to have people of this sort leave towns enough,
by and by they will cease to want to be saturates. There
is practically no crime in a region where no liquor is sold.
I have heard a great deal of criticism of Maine by peo-
ple who have found liquor there. I have been in Maine a
good deal in the interest of my work on the boundary.
I have been, for instance, in St. Croix, up the river, when
along late in the evening, evil-looking creatures would
come out of the ground and offer to show you where
liquor is sold. But I have seen in many cities there, boys
growing up who have never seen the inside of a saloon;
who know it only as a far-off thing. It is a tremendous
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
thing to make the sale of liquor illegal, even though you
have blind pigs on every street. There is a difference be-
tween its being illegal, and its being backed by the law;
and I say with a great deal of positiveness that Maine
is a sober State. There are many saturates left; in the
summer time it is over run by people who carry bottles
of liquor from Boston and New York and even more bar-
barous districts ; but the great body of the people in
Maine are not connected with this ; and, what is most im-
portant of all, there is growing up a body of young men
and women who do not know anything of the influence
connected with the saloon. And that is true also of Kan-
sas, and of Alabama. In the town of Montgomery, I was
impressed by the change from what it was ten or fifteen
years ago. Some thirty years ago I met a young fellow
there who told me, as a great curiosity, that there was a
man in Crab Orchard who never drank whisky ; and now
that county has gone dry, and the whole South has under-
gone an amazing change of heart.
That was a fine touch in Mr. Hughes' address where he
showed the relation of liquor and war. Every reformer
knows how the evil influences entrench themselves, as
they are doing in Europe to-day. In Russia, there has
come some advantage; they have no freedom, and the
Czar can reach out and stop the liquor traffic. The only
time I was ever in Russia was on this side, and I wanted
to see one of the seal rookeries there. The Russians were
in doubt whether to permit it, and they poured out vodka
and drank over it, and while they were thus engaged, I
went over to the rookery and saw all of it before it had
been decided whether I had permission to do so. So I
was interested in the habits of Russia at that time; and
their habit was to be drunk after four o'clock.
Now, England is going dry. England has been cursed
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Testimony of Science as to Alcohol and Social Progress
more than this country by the liquor traffic, partly because
it is legalized here only for a year at a time ; but in Eng-
land a man can sell liquor unless there is some reason why
he shouldn't ; and when he gets a license, it is legalized
and goes on with the place. You know the House of
Lords is sometimes spoken of as the Beerage of England,
because so many of them are brewers who have paid from
sixty to ninety thousand dollars, and have thus become
members of the House of Lords.
One of the great reasons why the saloon should be abol-
ished in the name of sanitation is its connection with the
Red Light District. Among the appurtenances of nearly
every saloon is some house of ill fame. An army surgeon
made a statement in regard to one of our army posts, that
the soldiers very rarely go to a house of prostitution
when they are sober, and very rarely when they are drunk ;
but when they have had a glass or two of beer, they go.
Then they are ruined, for sooner or later those who
visit these places become infected with an almost incur-
able disease. One is caused by a parasitic animal that
gets into the blood ; and the other, not so severe, but
harder to cure, is a little plant organism ; and this is one
of the greatest scourges of womankind, because so many
surgical cases are caused by it. Sterility is also caused by
this infection. We have a moral right and duty, all the
right a free country can give, to attack a thing that brings
about such conditions.
Mills once said, ''Small efforts can never attack great
evils." They do not have small effects ; they have no
effect at all. To eradicate this evil we must go at it, not
by small efforts, but with a determination to get out of
our society any profit from the sale of alcohol.
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Chapter XXVI.
VOTES FOR WOMEN AND SOCIAL PROGRESS.
BY MRS. GERBERLING.
As I belong to San Francisco and am a native daughter,
I naturally hesitate very much about making a suffrage
speech here in California, where we have already got suf-
frage and the struggle is behind us, so that now nothing
bores an audience more than suffrage. We suffragists
are out of a job, and besides, it takes all our time to
keep up with our municipal campaign and all the political
activities that we have undertaken, and so we haven't
time to talk about suffrage, except as it may help the
other States of the Union.
The Congressional Union was formed for the purpose
of holding this administration, or any administration,
responsible for not bringing forward the amendment giv-
ing women in this country the suffrage. We do not at-
tack this administration particularly ; we should attack
any administration for the same reason ; but they are
responsible for not submitting the Susan B. Anthony
amendment. This amendment started in 1875, and has
had a rather difficult career ever since. It is not the
same as the Mondell amendment, which is for the purpose
of submitting the matter to the different States.
It seems to me that the only right thing to do is to get
a Federal amendment; if this Federal amendment could
only go through, thirty-six States would be enfranchised
at once. W^e already have eleven ; we have the solid
West, and I defy any one to point out any important in-
stance where the suffrage has not been a success. I can
say most decidedly that we have found it an unqualified
success here. (Applause.)
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Votes for Women and Social Progress
We found out a great many things after having this
suffrage given to us ; we found, for instance, that in many
cases we had been wasting our time over charities. We
used to tell a story about a woman who came into her
kitchen and found the water all turned on and overflow-
ing the sink onto the floor, and the maid busy wiping up
the water. When she had turned off the water, she asked
the maid, "Why didn't you turn off that water?" And
the maid answered, ''I couldn't, because I was so busy
mopping up ; I didn't have time."
We found that in a great many cases we had been just
like that maid. Florence Kelley, the well-known social
worker, said to me, "I wish I had taken up this question
of suffrage sixteen years ago." Jane Addams, too, has
come out in favor of suffrage ; almost all our great women
have come to it, and we feel sure that these women are
on the right track.
The constitution now provides that color, race, or pre-
vious condition of servitude shall be no bar to the right
of suffrage ; we want to add to these words the word,
"sex." Sex has nothing to do with voting. I don't like
the idea of sex entering into any question of merit. That
is one great thing that this exposition has accomplished ;
there is no women's building. The work of the woman
painter is in the Fine Arts Building ; it is a matter of the
merit of the painting, not a matter of sex. As one of the
previous speakers has said, this is a transition age ; we
no longer respect a man who simply piles up money. Dr.
Felix Adler said once that to see a man devote his life to
making millions of bricks was not an inspiring sight.
When a man really wishes to do fine work, he makes
bricks enough to build a workshop, then he goes on to
his real work. It has come to be a matter for rebuke
when a man devotes himself to the one object of piling up
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
money and nothing else. We must have higher stand-
ards in our social life, and by giving women the vote, we
give into the hands of a class of the community which
has remained outside of this commercialism, the power to
combat it. The problem of commercialized vice is one
of the questions that we have to settle. We already have
our Red Light Abatement Bill, I am thankful to say. I
believe the women will bring to these problems a sort of
housekeeping instinct that a man lacks. It comes natural
for women to do municipal housekeeping.
This sixty-third Congress has passed a good deal of
legislation, there has been a war tax, and banking legisla-
tion, and they nearly passed a Federal ship purchasing
bill ; but practically all the legislation that has passed suc-
cessfully has been concerned with commercial things.
Congress has failed to pass the measures dealing with
child labor, the protection of women, conservation, and
such bills. You will notice that the preference has been
given to protecting the rights of property and business,
not to the protection of human Hfe.
These women of the Congressional Union feel that the
question of suffrage should come before this Congress ;
that it should not be snowed under by business and preju-
dice. It seems to me that every man and woman ought
to work for this amendment and do what they can to help.
Ask your Senators and Congressmen how they stand on
this question. If it is possible to convert them, well and
good; if they are influenced by selfish motives, it is best
to make them come out and show where they stand.
Every one can help in this way; if thousands of letters
are sent it will do great good, and I appeal to you to help
in every manner that you can in this great movement for
the enfranchisement of women.
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Chapter XXVII.
TAXATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS.
BY A. J. WALLACE
I have the driest subject in the world to bring before
you this afternoon ; the most persistent, and also one of
the Hveliest — Taxes. There are two problems presenting
themselves all the time ; one is the ever-increasing tax
rate, and the other, the ever-increasing wealth of certain
residents of our States and cities. I want to touch upon
them both, and make the menace of great wealth and the
burden of great taxation bear a relation to each other that
shall prove helpful in the solution of some problems. I
am not going to suggest any plan by which the expenses
of government will be less than they now are. I am only
going to suggest that the taxes might, to some degree, be
raised by another method. We shall have taxes as long as
we have our ideals. This is the day of costly living, isn't
it? Yes. We want the telephone. We like candles, but
we would rather have kerosene, and still rather have gas
than either, and we have a still more decided preference
for electricity. Once I had an ox cart; then I secured a
lumber wagon, and then I had a buggy and now I have
an automobile, and there is a difference in the cost. The
same condition prevails in public matters. We will have
schoolhouses that outrank the university buildings of
twenty years ago. We will have automobiles ; and auto-
mobiles mean good roads at an outlay of millions of dol-
lars. But we are going to have them, and they are going
to cost, and we are going to pay the bills. How are we
going to do it?
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
On the other hand, we have wealth in our country
greater than you think we have. We have more milHon-
aires than you dream, unless you have looked it up. There
are men here whose hair is turning white who can re-
member as well as I can the time when you could count
on the fingers of one hand all the millionaires whose
names you had ever heard. Now we have men who are
not merely millionaires, but multi-miUionaires. We have
in our land to-day men whose wealth is nearer the billion
mark than the million, though we can't understand what
that means.
Do you realize that we have men in our country — in-
dividuals— so rich that it would have made a kingdom
wealthy in the old time? Do you know that there are
men whose annual income is greater than the annual in-
come of the government was under George Washington?
Whose wealth is so great that their annual income is
equal to the annual, regular expenditure of the govern-
ment of this State? We have wealth so great, accumu-
lated in the last fifteen years mainly, that that wealth is
a menace to-day, or, if not to-day, it only needs to in-
crease in the next half-score years as it has in the last
and everybody will admit that it is a menace, while in
the hands of a few.
Do you question it? Let me tell you something. Be-
yond all that we knew before, we have learned something
in the last year. The Federal Government at last has an
income tax, which is something very different from an
inheritance tax. The income tax has revealed some
things. In these United States forty-four men, men who
have tried to push down as low as they dare the statement
of the total amount of their income — forty-four men un-
der oath have declared that their annual income is over a
miUion dollars apiece. You don't grasp it; you almost
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Taxation and Social Progress
thought I said they were worth a milHon dollars apiece;
but their annual income, sworn to under oath, is a mil-
lion or more apiece, and there are ninety-one men, each
of whose income is over half a million. This is a reve-
lation made only recently, under this Federal law.
In one district in the State of New York, twenty-six
men, under the income tax, pay $2,800,000. In other
words, they pay over a hundred thousand dollars apiece
of income tax. That is to say, after they have paid all
other kinds of taxes, on property which they possess, they
then pay an average of a hundred thousand dollars apiece
as income tax.
The simple fact is this : that the income tax revealed
the very great wealth of a large number of our people in
figures that we can hardly understand.
If you think that is not a menace, you must remember
that the wealth of two or three of our men put together
would aggregate an amount that in the past could change
the form of government of almost any country in the
world. Only a few years ago Russia allowed the perse-
cution of the Jews in her territory, and most cruel and
bitter was the suffering. A little later Russia and Japan
were at war, and Japan needed money. A Jewish firm
of bankers, the Rothschilds, financed Japan throughout
the war, so that she triumphed over Russia. Don't you
think those Hebrew bankers rejoiced in their power to
punish the persecutors of their race?
I only want to call your attention to the fact that one
banking firm was big enough to change, potentially, the
relative positions of two of the greatest nations in the
world. One firm had strength enough to make Japan
triumphant over Russia. There is a menace in wealth
such as that, and if we don't know it to-day, we will know
it later unless something is done; unless some law is
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
passed that shall mean that no man shall be allowed to
inherit more than a specified amount.
The inheritance tax law is an old law. Rome had it,
and Egypt had it before Rome. England gets over a hun-
dred million a year out of it. France and Germany get
sixty or seventy million ; and nowhere has it developed
more interest in its workings than in New Zealand and
Australia. America has had it for nearly a hundred
years. In Pennsylvania first, and to-day in over twenty
States there is an inheritance tax law ; but as yet our
people understand it very little. You are probably more
ignorant of it than you ought to be, and probably you
don't realize how significant it is.
California has had an inheritance tax law for a number
of years. We have averaged three hundred and sixty
thousand dollars a year from that source for fifteen years,
ending in 1912. Never did we get a milHon prior to 1910.
In 1911 I took the matter up with men in the legislature,
and they were much interested, and I found that the ex-
cellent auditor of the State, Mr. Nye, was unwilling to
have the law changed ; but at last he did agree to some
changes. Prior to that we began at ten thousand dollars
exemption, and then taxed at the rate of a half of one
per cent on the estate, and graded the tax up from that to
three per cent on five hundred thousand dollars. I said
that it was very unfair to tax a widow on her second ten
thousand. When everything is so costly the State has
no business to touch so small an amount; and I asked
that we exempt twenty-five thousand dollars. The legis-
lature did exempt twenty-four thousand dollars, and since
1911 we have exempted that amount. So you may take
comfort ; if you have only twenty-four thousand dollars
of assets, and your death should occur, your family will
not pay one dollar, and if you have ninety-six thousand
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Taxation and Social Progress
dollars of assets, and you leave a widow and three minor
children and a will that divides the property equally
among the four, no one of them will pay one dollar of in-
heritance tax. That, of course, cuts off some revenue;
but in 1911 we changed so that instead of grading up to
three per cent, we advanced to five per cent ; and we
promptly got in more income with that slight change, even
though we lost on the small estates. One estate settled
in San Francisco under the new law, gave us $250,000 to-
wards the funds of the State, and under the old three per
cent it would have been only $126,000.
I was very much dissatisfied with the law as passed in
1911. I wanted it to grade up to five per cent on five
hundred thousand dollars, and then, instead of stopping,
have the tax graduated a bit higher up. I could not see
why the graduation theory should not continue in the
higher figures and the tax rate on an estate of a million
should not be higher than on half a million, and on fifty
million more than on five million. We have at least two
concerns in California that have assets in the neighbor-
hood of a hundred million each, one belongs to a man
ninety years of age, a foreigner, and the other to a non-
resident. We have wealth here that we have not thought
of, and we have wronged our people that California has
not gotten, under our laws, a larger proportion of that
wealth ; that when such men die we do not get a due pro-
portion of these assets for the people of this State.
I would like to call your attention to the fact that in
1913 it became very much easier to get a change in the
law than in 1911, for already there had been some evi-
dences of the beneficial working of the 1911 law, and
quite easily we got the legislature to advance the rate
so that now it is five per cent on five hundred thousand
dollars ; seyen and one-half per cent between five hundred
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
thousand dollars and a half a million, and ten per cent on
all over a million. Now that is going to have results
from this time on. That law came into eftect on the thir-
teenth day of August, 1913 ; and the sixteenth day of
August, three days later, there died a man in southern
California worth nearly ten millions. You didn't know
we had so rich a man? He probably made his wealth
north of us, but for reasons I would not dare to suggest,
he lived south of Tehachapi.
We have got, in the last few weeks, $480,000 out of
that estate, and we would have got much less if the man
had died one week earlier, because the new law taking
seven and one-half per cent would not have worked. He
had a very large family, and the property was divided
between the children, and I think no one of them came
quite up to the million ; and yet we got practically a half-
million dollars to reduce the taxes of the people of the
State, or prevent larger taxation, which would otherwise
have been necessary.
I want you to like that law and believe in it. You can
all exercise an influence and see that this law has a large
working out, and when it has, then our taxes w^ill be
very materially reduced all over the State.
I want to give you an illustration or two of how things
have worked. We have had a good many cases where we
have rejoiced over the amounts of money that we have
secured under the inheritance tax law in the past. A
while ago two hundred thousand dollars were needed for
a certain public building, but the funds were low, and
every one rejoiced when they remembered that we were
going to get two hundred and fifty thousand dollars out
of a certain estate ; and we did get it. Out of the Baldwin
property we expected to get two hundred and fifty thou-
sand dollars, but we did get three hundred and thirty
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Taxation and Social Progress
thousand dollars out of that estate, and the administrator,
a few weeks ago, reported his distribution and winding
up of the estate, in which he had distributed thirty-six mil-
lion dollars from the Baldwin estate to the heirs. And
we, the people of California, got three hundred and thirty
thousand dollars, and we were mean-spirited enough to
glory in the fact that we got that much. At the time of
E. J. Baldwin's death, the estate was appraised at ten
million dollars. It did grow in value after that, though
it was presumably worth more than the value fixed at
that time. Remember that we, the people of the State,
got only three hundred and thirty thousand dollars, and
ask yourselves who made that ten miUion dollars? That
is the question I want to ask. The State must do right.
The State, just because it has the power, dare not push
out its hand and grab unworthily. It must do right ; but
it must do right by the people of the State as well as do
right by the heirs of great wealth.
Who made the Baldwin ten milHon dollars? Baldwin
acquired many acres just out of Pasadena, at a few cents
an acre, decades ago. He had acquired thirty-two hun-
dred acres close to Los Angeles for a song on a mort-
gage long ago. That thirty-two hundred acre property
was sold a year ago for six million dollars. What did
Baldwin do with those acres ? Improve them ; make them
valuable by the dollars he put into them? No. I went
out to see the ranches the other day, and there was the
same old rusty barn that was there decades ago. I don't
think you can find five thousand dollars worth of improve-
ments on the place. And the other big property, I re-
member a cottage and a few pretty httle things ; but
there was practically nothing done on either property.
And those were among his main assets.
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
Now, then, who made the vakie that centered in those
ranches? Baldwin didn't make it. If Baldwin had ac-
quired the same number of acres down in one of the
South American republics where there was no stable gov-
ernment, what would the value of that property have
been ? Practically nothing. But because we have a stable
government, a civilized community, good laws, and be-
cause God has given us this rich soil and glorious sun-
shine, there is value here ; and mainly because a million
people from all over the world liked this country of ours
and came and settled around these two great ranches of
Baldwin's ; because they built homes and blocks of stores
in town all around his property, it came to have great
value. We the people of the State, made that ten million
dollars, or at any rate, nine-tenths of it; made the value
that is in the Baldwin property, and we were false to the
people of the State when we accepted only three hundred
and thirty thousand dollars, and turned over nine and two-
thirds millions to people who didn't make it at all. (Ap-
plause.)
In Los Angeles, the estate of a woman was admin-
istered a few years ago worth a million and a half, and
California got thirty-five thousand dollars. She didn't
make that valuable property ; the population made it.
Robinson Crusoe lived on an island that was undoubtedly
rich in soil and productive, and had great inherent value ;
but you never heard of an advance in real estate on his
island, not even when Friday came. But if a hundred
thousand people had come to Crusoe's island, then there
would have been great value in it. Folks make value.
Every child in New York adds to the value of real estate
in New York. So in Los Angeles, every new comer, and
every child born adds to the value of real estate. If you
took two hundred and fifty thousand people away, you
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Taxation and Social Progress
would find a very great reduction of values in Los An-
geles or San Francisco. Take away half your population
here, and property will go down at once. Folks make
value, and because they make value, in our laws, from
this time forward, we are bound to recognize them and
their rights, as we have never fully done in the past.
New York State has been getting about eight million
dollars a year from the inheritance tax. But an accident
occurred on the ocean; the Titanic went down, and with
it many men of wealth ; and it was estimated that New
York would get from their estates about twenty million
dollars. One man died of great wealth, a world-known
name, and he left as his one principal heir a slender,
gentle-looking boy of twenty-one, Vincent Astor, a young
man, as we are told, of good impulses and generous char-
acter. He has had placed on his young shoulders a
burden of something like a hundred millions to carry,
and there isn't one of you but that feels sorry for him.
You all know perfectly well that if he had inherited a
hundredth part of that amount, or less than that, his
chances for a well-developed manhood, the chances for a
full exercise of all his qualities of mind and body would
have been greater than they now are ; and if the State
or the Nation had the rest of it, it would be just that
much better off. It is a big question, and it is going to
affect our educational and moral advancement. This is
one illustration ; we have them all around.
So, all around us, there is very great wealth, passing
down from father to son, or to more remote heirs, all
the time. You and I have assumed that it was a kind
of divine law that provided that the child should inherit
from the father; but it isn't. It is a good law, when
fairly regulated, but it is a man-made law. A good law-
yer will tell you that the State has provided the whole
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
method by which transfer is made, and by which a child
inherits from the father; and the State has always made
a slight tax, and later a somewhat larger tax. The State
has the power to provide how property shall be inherited,
and what proportion of it shall go to son and daughter;
and the only question the State has to face now is, "What
is the right thing? What would justice mean? What
ought to be done?" I stand to-day absolutely in favor
of all due encouragement being given to enterprise and
ability. The State's duty is to make such laws as shall
help men to do business. It is the right of the State, and
we demand of the State or Nation that it shall do all it
can to help along the prosperity of its people; and if a
man of large endowment is keen enough and bright
enough to make and gain, give him a chance, as long as
he does it legitimately. The only question is, when this
man has done with the things of this life ; when He who
made him has spoken again, and has said, ''Leave your
possessions on earth," then the question is, whether the
children alone shall stand by the bier. Let the State's
representatives stand there also ; let the laws determine
what proportion shall go to the children, and what pro-
portion shall come to the State; but the division must be
made in righteousness and fairness.
There is, in this country of ours, in this State of ours,
an old man who came here long ago from another coun-
try. I saw him at the depot a few years ago, and he was
than past eighty years of age, and he is still living. And
that man, it is said, possesses property in California that
will allow him to drive his flocks and herds from San
Diego to the Oregon line, and camp every night on his
own land. He has huge properties, tremendous ranches ;
some mountainous, and some of the best, worth hundreds
of dollars an acre. That man acquired property, because
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Taxation and Social Progress
of his keenness, all over the State in vast areas. Let us
give him credit for it. What has he done? He has kept
his flocks and herds in uncounted numbers ; but nowhere,
so far as I know, has there been any marked improvement
on his lands. But nevertheless, this land that was once
worth almost nothing is immensely valuable to-day some-
how, and the somehow we ought to investigate. Great
value has come to that land. How did it come ? Because
ours is a glorious State, and the people flock here and take
up their little farms all around this man's properties, and
have made this land valuable, and he is the gainer by
what the public has done for him. He will go to his re-
ward. I have not a word to say against him. I do not
know that he ever acquired an acre unlawfully. What I
plead for is that our people in our State, who made the
greater part of his gain, shall come in for some reasonable
proportion of that vast property, which is presumably
worth not less than a hundred millions. Am I wrong?
If I am, I don't want the State to get it ; but if I am
right, I want the people of the State to wake up and say
that we have rights that we have slept upon, and demand
our share of the great wealth that we have helped to
make, when the man who has accumulated it has passed
beyond.
I have long letters in my possession from a man who,
in the city in which he lives, has a private art gallery
which he lets the public see. I was invited to visit that
art gallery. I didn't want to go, and I will tell you why.
That man sent me a newspaper clipping from a San
Francisco paper, finding fault with an address which I
had made, similar to this that I am now making ; and in
that letter he labored with me, page after page, to show
me that I was wrong; 'that great wealth in the hands of
the few was a blessing to the people at large, who didn't
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
themselves know how to acquire such wealth. He sent
me a page from the San Francisco Chronicle with a pic-
ture of this man and the statement that he owned a mil-
lion acres of California land, as if that were to his credit.
I went to the Attorney General of this State ; I said, "See
here, this is what this man owns ; tell me, isn't that land
worth about a hundred dollars an acre on an average?"
He said, ''There is a good deal of redwood, some of the
best timber land of California. Yes, it must be worth an
average of one hundred dollars an acre." A hundred mil-
lion dollars worth of land in this State held by a non-
resident, because our laws allowed him to come in and
grab what belonged to the State.
Take this fact. I was in San Francisco in the absence
of the governor, and it was my duty to welcome a good
roads convention a few years ago. At that convention
there were representatives from Mexico to Alaska, and
from British Columbia came the treasurer of that prov-
ince. He said, *'We, in British Columbia, appropriated
four million dollars for good roads last year, and this
year we have set aside another four million dollars." I
knew the population of British Columbia was less than
that of San Francisco or Los Angeles. I hunted him up,
and I said, "Tell me, what do you mean when you give
those figures ? How do you get the four million dollars ?
You didn't bond the province ?" "Oh, no," he said. "But
your taxes are not enormous ?" "Oh," he said, "we have
hardly any taxes at all in British Columbia. We lease our
agricultural lands, and our timber lands and our mineral
lands, and this year we will get fifteen million dollars
rental." Meanwhile, California, by its unwisdom, turns
over to a single owner, a million acres of land, and lets
him pay for it at the rate of about $2.50 per acre.
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Do you charge me with being a Henry George man, a
single-taxer ? Oh, well, if you did, I could stand it; but
I am not. But I am profoundly thankful that God gave
Henry George to the world.
Do you think that I am verging on socialism? I am
not a socialist. There is a country in this world which is
very strongly socialist, yet they have never got into power
in that country. If they had been in power ; if socialism
instead of imperialism had controlled Germany, there
would be no war in Europe to-day ; but I am not a social-
ist. I am a good many removes from it ; but I learn from
everything; from Henry George and from socialism, and
I aim to do what one man may do to help bring about bet-
ter conditions that will help those who most need the help
of great wealth to get their fair share of what is theirs.
I am glad to talk to you people this afternoon on this
subject because I believe that each one of you will go
back to your own localities and spread this doctrine. I
gave this address at the commencement exercises of one
of our colleges some time ago, and a great many million-
aires who had had to do with the origin of that school
and were on its Board of Trustees, were there, and a
friend of mine afterward inquired whether they agreed
with the main sentiment, and strange to say, every one
of them said that it was justice. Wealth would practi-
cally lose nothing, for, if such a law were in effect, inside
of twenty years wealth of the living would pay but a
little in current expenses. A legitimate inheritance tax
would relieve them as well as other tax payers, and they
would not have to pay it until after they were done
with it.
Ex-President Roosevelt — and I dare say to you that he
still lives and sometimes writes — he said to me once,
''Some day there will be a law that will provide that no
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man shall inherit more than a given amount; the rest
shall go to the State."
John Stuart Mill goes farther than I have gone in any
word that I have said, and his is a name to conjure with;
for Mill says that "while there is some reason in a child
inheriting from a father, that there is no reason whatever
for collateral inheritance. Just because some one who
never saw the wealthy man turns out to be the nearest,
though a remote relative, is no reason at all why he should
become the possessor of his wealth." He works out
a scheme that provides that all that any man may inherit
shall always be a little less than half a milHon. I know
you would be grieved to think of a man starting out in
life with only half a million. A banker, who is worth
some tens of millions, complained in my presence that the
time was coming when a man couldn't leave more than
half a milHon to any one of his children. Alas, how sad !
I am glad that I have had this hearing, but I shall re-
joice the more if you will go home and teach these doc-
trines to others.
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Chapter XXVIII.
THE KEY TO SOCIAL PROGRESS.
BY CHARLES S. GARDNER.
Being just at the end of a twenty-seven-hundred-mile
journey, I am very much impressed with the distance
which I had to cover to reach here. I find in this region
of the country an intense feehng in regard to these
social questions, which is very grateful to my heart. Per-
haps it is characteristic of your western life that you
should be intense, and that the pressure should be high ;
but I am convinced that the progress which this congress
forecasts is going to need a high pressure of steam to
carry it through, and the higher the pressure, the better.
I felt so this morning particularly, when I listened to that
magnificent address from one of the men active in your
prison life, and have felt it in several of the other great
addresses that I have had the pleasure of listening to.
Every student of social movements to-day will first
seek a standpoint, a point of view, from which he can
survey the whole field of social movements in order to get
them in their truest relation, and understand and appreci-
ate most broadly their significance, a point of view which
will give him a standpoint from which he can best evaluate
the different movements which are pressing for our loy-
alty and our aid.
The true point of view from which to consider all these
things is that of the child. What does it mean for the
child? That is the question which every social reformer
and every social revolutionist must consider; for I got the
impression from some of the things I heard that there
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is a little of the spirit of revolution abroad in this part of
the country; and I must say that I am not entirely out
of sympathy with it.
What we want to know always with regard to every
movement is this : What does it mean for the child ? I
do not underestimate at all the importance of growri-up
people, or the significance of social movements with ref-
erence to them ; but after all, the movements in which we
are engaged look so far ahead that they are not going to
be realized in a day; and therefore the significant point
of view, the point of view from which one can see the
whole territory most significantly, is that of the child.
I love to look at it from this point of view also because
an appeal to-day, made in the name of the child, reaches
the hearts of more people than any other appeal that can
be made. Whatever may be our attitude toward children
to-day, one thing is true; I think that as they grow
fewer, they grow more precious. There was never any age
or any generation, which brought forth fewer children
than this one, or which valued the children more. That
is a paradox worth thinking about.
I shall not take your time to discuss the nature of the
child. We all understand that the child is simply a poten-
tial personality ; humanity in the raw.
The child is undeveloped and has to be shaped, and the
shaping process takes place through the continual play
of forces upon it from the environment in which it lives.
The constant interaction of the growing personality upon
its environment is the process through which that per-
sonality is developed. We have debated for a long time
whether circumstances made men, or men made circum-
stances ; and the reason why that question is such a per-
petual one and cannot be solved, is that both positions are
true. Circumstances make men; and at the same time,
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men are making the circumstances. The environment, in
its action upon life, is formative ; and at the same time
and through the very same process, life is formative and
creative in its action upon the environment.
The significant thing about the child is that the en-
vironment does the work first. The child is born help-
less ; the little one comes into the world, is born into an
environment, which it had no share in making, and which
must begin its action intensively upon it from the moment
it opens its eyes in the world. The very first things it
sees, the first sounds that assault its little ears, are the
formative processes beginning at once upon the young
life ; and however much the little one may modify his en-
vironment from the moment he begins to breathe (for
that is always true ; it does begin to modify the environ-
ment the moment it is born — a home becomes a different
sort of an institution from the moment a child is born
into it), yet nevertheless that modification is without pur-
pose, it is not inteUigent. It is simply instinctive ; the
child does not make its environment in an inteUigent or
purposive way, whereas the environment is all the time
conditioning that little life and setting the limits within
which it must develop. It is very important, therefore,
to consider what sort of an environment the child is born
into.
There has been a process going on in our modern life
which I do not think has attracted the attention of social
thinkers and workers as much as it should, by any man-
ner of means. There has come about, in these later days,
almost without our knowing it, a very radical change in
the relation which organized society — the great society,
the state and the whole social order — sustains to the child.
In the days when the home was a relatively isolated,
and at the same time a relatively independent institution ;
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in the days when it was a world unto itself, economic and
civic, the outside world beyond the home had very remote
and indirect relations with the child. But to-day, what
we witness is this : homes no longer stand comparatively
isolated and relatively independent, but are brought very
close together, and have become linked up in a very com-
plex and intricate social order. The home has lost its
economic independence and its civic semi-independence.
One by one, many of the functions that used to be per-
formed in it have been transferred to outside agencies.
What kinds of work are carried on in the home to-day?
Here in San Francisco, for instance, what sorts of activ-
ities, or functions, are carried on in the home, where a
family lives in a little flat on the tenth floor of a modern
apartment building and gets its meals at the cafe below ?
Almost every form of activity that was once carried on in
the home has been, in great measure, transferred to out-
side institutions. The result has been that the child no
longer grows in a little garden limited to itself, called
the home; but almost from the beginning of its life it
finds itself thrust out into the great, complex life of
general society. The state and the outside world — organ-
ized society is coming into closer and closer contact with
the child, both directly and through the home. But what
I now emphasize is the direct impact of organized society
upon the child. Consequently when we now talk about
what sort of an environment children are growing up in,
we are bound not merely to consider the home, but also
the great social order in the midst of which the child
lives. (Applause.)
So we can't solve the problem of the child by working
on the home alone. How long is it before the little one
is taken out of the home and put into school, or, if not
into school, under the control of organized society? How
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long is it before it is thrust out into the factory? And
when it is sent neither to the school nor the factory, how
long is it before the little one, as it toddles out of the
tenement onto the street, finds itself face to face with the
great, organized society, and meets the representative of
that society in the person of the uniformed policeman?
The child to-da}^ comes in contact with organized soci-
ety at a very early age. Not only is much of the economic
activity that used to be centered in the home, removed
from the home ; but the educational activity has been also
transferred. The child is sent out now, before it is old
enough to go alone, with its nurse to the kindergarten, or
some other school — too often in order that the mother
may get rid of it. Religious education also has gone out
of the home, and it has not gone anywhere else, either.
It has left the home and found no other abiding place;
and the result is that we are bringing up a generation of
children, the great majority of whom have no positive
and definite religious instruction whatsoever.
Now, I ask you to think with me a little while very
earnestly, what does all this mean for the child in its rela-
tion to social progress? Evidently it is a question, not
only of the home, but of the social order itself; and we
must look at the social order from this point of view. We
must ask ourselves about it and study it from the stand-
point of the little one.
In the first place, we must secure for every child a
proper home. It can never again be the old-time home.
We might as well give up that dream. You cannot turn
the wheels of society backward into the period of the
isolated home ; you have got to try to adapt the home to
the modern situation. But society must undertake to
secure a proper home. That is to say, the child must have
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a place which is a real home, where it has the care of
a real motherhood and fatherhood.
Some time ago I had occasion to look for a certain
woman whom I knew wished employment, a widow; and
I found her in a dark, back room on the third floor of a
tenement. She was ill, largely because, as a widow, she
had been thrown out into the competitive economic life
of our time, with a child to care for; and that child was
a fatal handicap upon her. She couldn't get employment
anywhere. Why? Because she was tied to that child,
and so she was out of employment and slowly starving
to death because her mother heart refused to surrender
the child to a public institution.
Now, what does that mean? There are such cases by
the thousand in every community. It means that society
is as much responsible for those children as the mother.
(Applause.)
The change which I have described in the relation of
the child to society means that society must take over a
part of the responsibility for the little ones. I make a
plea this afternoon for the endowment of widowed moth-
erhood. That ought to be done; we cannot and should
not be contented with any program short of that, and
every widow who has to make her own living in our
present social order, must have the help of society to en-
able her to perform the function of motherhood ; for it
is a fearful, I might say an almost diabolical, alternative
which we force upon the widowed mother to-day — either
to give up her child and sacrifice her motherhood, or
starve, or worse.
I make a plea also for the provision of a proper
home for the child so that it may not only have mother-
hood, but fatherhood also. As a matter of fact, there are
great numbers of men in our land to-day, who, under our
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The Key to Social Progress
competitive system, are pressed down below the normal
living point, and cannot provide a home; they cannot
give their children a home. Wages are too low. I would
like to have you tell me how anybody can live to-day and
rear a family on five hundred dollars a year. May be
you have got prices down out here to the point where it
can be done; but where I live it is impossible. And yet
that is the average wage of the working man to-day. In
America, so far as we have been able to learn by statis-
tics, the average laboring man has to live on five hundred
dollars a year and bring up his family.
What is the result ? That the children are underfed ;
the mother is forced out to work to supplement the family
income ; and the father is disheartened and discouraged
and very frequently, in his desperation, forsakes mother
and children.
Here we come squarely up against the obstruction that
we come up against from whatever direction we approach
this social problem : a cruel and anti-Christian industrial
system. (Applause.)
You may study it and tinker at it as much as you please,
but you can never cure this situation until you take this
central stronghold, and substitute for present industrial
conditions an economic order organized according to the
law of Jesus Christ. The present, unjust industrial sys-
tem is organized from the bottom to the top on an anti-
Christian principle, and it has got to be reconstructed
from the foundation; and I make a plea for this recon-
struction in the interest of the child.
A thing that I frequently do in order that I may renew
my enthusiasm — that it may have a sort of rebirth — is to
take a walk through some of the tenement house or slum
districts which are always close by in any city, and see
the droves of little children, dirty and ragged and ignor-
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ant, swarming in the streets. If the angels up yonder in
heaven don't look down and weep over that situation, they
must have no tears to shed up there. There is the great
plague spot of every city, the slum; that is, of every in-
dustrial city. In studying the slum, I wish you would
notice how it always goes with industry.
All around the slums are the great tenement dis-
tricts ; and in these wretched dwelling places, if we can
call them that — for they are hardly human abodes — into
or near to these districts are pressed the working people,
the common people, the poor ; and that is where are being
reared most of the children in our generation. They are
swarming around that great plague spot, the slum ; and
they are slipping by thousands, down, down into its dark
depths.
I say we might as well attack the central condition.
The industrial order which brings about the situation has
got to be transformed or else we cannot redeem human
society and save the children. And if there is any child
worse off than the child in the slum, it is the rare child
that you find on the boulevards. That child is brought up
in an environment which is just as powerful in forming
its mind and heart on a wTong model and in cultivating
in its soul a false view of human values, as the child down
below. One of the strongest appeals that can be made
for the transformation and reorganization of our whole
economic life can be made in the interest of the unfortu-
nate rich.
But we must go farther than that in taking care of the
children. In addition to the fact that we must place the
child in a healthful environment and must give it real
fatherhood and motherhood, we have got to give it the
right sort of an education ; we have got to give all of them
the right sort of an education. I don't know what the
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The Key to Social Progress
state of public opinion is on that question in this part of
the country, but we must solemnly dedicate ourselves to
the proposition that every child born in our land must
have an education. If the home has so fallen down in
its function that it is no longer able to take care of the
situation, then the state must come to the rescue, or at
any rate stand behind the home and guarantee that negli-
gence in the home shall not forever and ever handicap
and bHght the growing child. For the child is a social
asset — one which may very easily become a liability, to be
sure; but it is a social asset, and all the children, ladies
and gentlemen, are your children. Let us remember that
all the children are our children, and we must see to it
that every one of them has as much education as by a
wise handling he can be induced to take.
Now, it doesn't become me on this occasion, I am sure,
to discuss the whole question of education. But I wish
to say one or two things. In my judgment there is noth-
ing that needs reform more than the schools, unless it be
the churches. I believe I will put the churches first, be-
cause I have found in my contact with ministers that the
average minister is frequently about as dense a man as I
find on social questions. But there are some dense ones
in the schoolrooms, too.
We need an education that is adapted to child nature.
We haven't found out how to do that yet. The truth is
that in the church and in the school and everywhere, ex-
cept in industry, the shadow of the Middle Ages is still
upon us. We have got to adapt our education to child
nature, and learn so to approach the child in the educa-
tional process as to get from it an effective response ; and
I believe it is possible to do this. But I go farther than
that. I believe that we are coming to the time when our
educational system will not only get a new psychological
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conception of its work, but when it must become in larger
measure a S3^stem of vocational guidance. Now, I am
not going to take up the question, which has been dis-
cussed pro and con, of vocational education. That is
not the proposition that I am discussing. My proposition
is that we need vocational guidance. The truth is that
modern society has become enormously complex, and the
average boy or girl stumbles around in this vast mass of
specialized activity without being able to find the particu-
lar place where he or she belongs. And in large measure
this is one of the contributory causes of crime. I am sure
it is partly the explanation of the weakening, the break-
down almost, of religious faith in modern people. A man
who finds himself by a series of accidents, misplaced in
the world, not properly related to life, not dove-tailed into
that particular function where he can find himself at
home ; the man who is misplaced in this way can never
be happy or contented, and can never be of the most use
to society. He is likely to be cut adrift and finally land
in prison. At any rate there is no question but that the
misplacing of men in our modern life has contributed
greatly to the weakening of religious faith. How can a
man believe that this is a divinely ordered world when he
finds his own life very badly ordered and adjusted to the
whole situation ? Put a man where he belongs ; where he
fits; where he is conscious that he has a field for the
development of his natural capacity, a field where he can
express himself ; and it is very reasonable for that man to
feel that there is a moral order. He himself fits into it,
and he can see some rationality in it ; but a man misplaced
cannot easily do so. In this, vast modern life that we are
living, there is nothing much more important than that
the boys and girls should be educated with a view to
ascertaining what their special capacities are, that they
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The Key to Social Progress
may be properly helped to find and place themselves, and
thus make their best contribution to the world.
But while I am talking about social transformation as
the line along which we must move in taking care of
our children, this paradox forces itself upon my mind ;
the children are about our only means of bringing about
the social transformation that we need. The work must
be done through the children. Do you know, I thank God
at every remembrance of this fact, that while this great,
organized society is taking the little ones and putting its
stamp upon them, and the process of social assimilation,
and assimilation to false ideals and standards, too, is go-
ing on, yet, please God, you cannot run a new generation
into the mold of the old completely ; and the new gener-
ation is our hope. The new generation will be the one
that will save human society. The children themselves
are growing up to-day as they never have before in the
wide world, discontented; but I love the discontent of
this age.
I thank God that we are discontented. If there is any-
body I feel sorry for down in my heart, it is for the man
or woman who looks on this world to-day and likes it as
it is. I am not a pessimist ; this is the best world we have
ever had ; that is the reason why we are discontented.
But the man or woman who can look on the facts we
face to-day, and can see our social situation as it really
is and be contented with it, is one for whom I feel sorry.
Here is where we touch the function of the Church
in relation to the whole situation. The function of the
Church in our modern life is to spiritualize and direct
the discontent of our age. That is our business as
preachers. This discontent is like dynamite ; it could
easily wreck human society. We see it cropping out in
anarchistic forms ; and let me tell you now, that if the
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
discontent of this age is not taken hold of by the Church
and directed and spiritualized and controlled to high eth-
ical ends, it is going to blow up the whole fabric.
Now that is our function as a church, and that is the
reason I despise the preacher that is contented with the
situation.
Christianity was born into a world of discontent, into
a world in which one social order was going to pieces be-
cause it was unethical from the foundation up; and that
new Christian movement born in Galilee took over the
discontented minds and directed them to a great spiritual
ideal ; and for a while saved the situation, imtil it sur-
rendered to the world. We are born into a world very
much like that; an age of discontent, an age when the
social order is going to pieces, and we are groping for
new ideals, and a new organization of society. And it
is the function of our divine religion to show men that
while this discontent is well founded, it should be guided
towards the kingdom of God ; and the kingdom means a
new industrial order; it means a new political order and
the redemption of human society through and through.
I believe with all my heart that the Church of Jesus
Christ is yet going to rise to the situation and perform
this function. I am satisfied that if she does not perform
this function as an instrument for the realization of the
kingdom of God, the Lord of the Church will cast it aside
as worthless and work out his purpose through some
other instrument. But I believe the Church will rise to
its opportunity; and may I say to you that I have the
happy privilege of instructing in these matters, every
year, a class of ministers nearly as large as this group of
people here. They are going out to be the pastors of the
churches; and into their minds, by God's help, I am
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The Key to Social Progress
planting, to the best of my ability, a new conception of
human progress. (Applause.)
The Church to-day is too much engaged in the business
of saving itself. Let me say this in conclusion ; the
Church will save itself by saving the world, and it will
save the world in a large way only as it saves organized
society. You can't save the world by picking out indi-
viduals from the wreck ; you can't do it. For do we not
see the fact before us continually — isn't the fact forcing
itself upon the vision of men, that the ungodly, anti-
Christian order is grinding out wreckage faster than we
can repair it ? It is by saving the whole machine that we
shall best be able to save the wastage and wreckage of
human life.
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Chapter XXIX.
DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL PROGRESS.
BY JOHN R. HAYNES.
Nearly two thousand years ago a Palestinian laboring
man, called Jesus, the Christ, taught his followers to love
their enemies. To-day, ten million men, calling them-
selves after the Carpenter, Christians, are drenching Eu-
rope with the blood of fellow-Christians. Two thousand
years ago this Son of the common people announced that
he had come into the world in order that all men might
have life more abundantly. Yet to-day, in so-called
Christian America, millions of men and women and little
children are rotting in the city slums.
Dr. Josiah Strong, when asked the question, 'Ts Chris-
tianity a failure ?" is quoted as replying, "I don't know ;
it's never been tried."
Fortunately, such anomalies as we witness to-day, can-
not continue permanently. Casuistry and word juggling
cannot reconcile such contradictions in this scientific age
when men demand honesty and candor in their thinking.
For many centuries one principle has been preached and
occasionally practiced by a few individuals in their per-
sonal lives, while another principle diametrically contrary
and antagonistic has characterized the whole framework
of our human institutions, political, religious, educational,
and economic. The words of Jesus, "Love your enemies,"
are heard often enough and sometimes practiced in our
personal relations ; but in our national thinking, patriot-
ism, meaning by that term our country's glory and wel-
fare as opposed to all others, is the dominant note. Pu-
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Democracy and Social Progress
pils in German schools are made proud by the stories of
German victories over French armies, and pnpils in
French schools are thrilled with the accounts of French
victories over German armies. American children find in
their school histories lengthy recitals of the battles of
Grant and Lee, and go forth quite ignorant of the great
constructive benefactors of our country, the scientists, the
poets, the inventors, the Howes, the Fultons, the Mc-
Dowells, and the Thoreaus. ''Love our enemies ?" Yes ;
but we must get the advantage of them in trade; we
must build custom houses and force them, if possible, to
buy our goods without our buying their goods. We must
build larger battleships "for defense" against our ene-
mies ; so that they can build larger battleships "for de-
fense" against us. So we Christians accumulate arma-
ments so great that their maintenance during times of
peace requires a tax burden of twenty-five hundred
million dollars a year and finally a war bursts upon us
that wrecks our civilization.
Perhaps, after all, Jesus was no such sentimental vision-
ary. Perhaps, if his precepts were incorporated into the
political and educational framework of our society, it
would pay in dollars and cents.
Personally, we love our neighbor; on Sunday, pretty
generally ; but on Monday the whole framework and char-
acter of our industrial system necessitates warfare for
supremacy without business rivals. The pagan motto
that competition is the life of trade, completely controls
our thinking and we have juggled words in order to show
that business competition and warfare are not anti-Chris-
tian. At last, however, business men of wide vision and
large experience are quite generally coming to the opin-
ion that competition is the death of trade and that the life
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of trade consists not in competition, but in co-operation.
Jesus may not have been so poor a political economist.
The regimentation of industry due to steam and elec-
tricity, together with the exhaustion of the supply of
free land in the rain belt, open to the ambitious laborer
without capital, have produced a temporary stage of
private economic despotism. Thirty million workers in
America are mostly laboring in vast, mobilized, industrial
armies. The privates, mill and mine workers and young
children, in these armies, are practically slaves — wage
slaves. For the fact as to the existence of a state of
slavery or a state of freedom is not determined by the
benevolence or malevolence, the gentleness or the cruelty
of the master. In a hundred lands and eras, slavery has
worn as many garbs; but as Abraham Lincoln once re-
marked, ''The essential character of slavery everywhere
remains the same. The spirit of slavery is expressed in
these words, 'You labor and toil and produce the bread,
and ril eat it.' " Said Vice President Marshall recently,
"The cause of the present industrial discontent in Amer-
ica is the fact that the worker is getting only about one-
fourth of what he produces." That the worker, under
the system of wage slavery, can change masters from day
to day does not free him from the state of slavery. His
slavery consists in the fact that he is producing bread for
others to eat, he getting only a small portion of the total
production.
The per capita wealth of the nation has trebled and
quadrupled since 1850. This, however, does not mean
that the average man is any better off now than then, for
wealth is enormously more unevenly distributed now than
then. It means wealth to the point of satiety to the cap-
tains in the industrial army and to the idlers outside the
army ; but to the privates in the industrial ranks, it means
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Democracy and Social Progress
no improvement whatever; in fact, the condition of the
average worker has been steadily growing worse since
1850. While the average per capita wealth is greater,
the wealth of the average man is less ; that is to say, the
poorer fifty per cent of the population has much less
wealth to-day than had the poorer fifty per cent in the
days of free land in the rain belt. Moreover, the Amer-
ican of that day was chiefly a country dweller, and be-
sides being provided, as a rule, with abundance of food,
he lived in the open air and sunshine. Industrial changes
already mentioned and operating everywhere, in Europe
as well as America, have drawn the population very
largely to the city. The economic condition of the aver-
age American worker is rapidly deteriorating. Since
1896, although wages have nominally increased between
twenty per cent and thirty per cent, the cost of life neces-
sities has increased between sixty per cent and seventy
per cent. The passage of practically each twelve months
during the last nineteen years has been marked by a de-
cided decrease in the purchasing power in life necessities
of the average laborer's weekly pay envelope. The Rus-
sell Sage Foundation investigators found that the amount
required to maintain a family of five in normal health
and ef^ciency ranged from $760 to $900 per year, accord-
ing to locality. The average American worker receives
only about $500 per year. This means two things : First,
the mother and children must go to work to piece out
the family income ; and second, that the family must Hve
below the standard of normal efficiency. Prof. Scott
Nearing, of the University of Pennsylvania, after years
of investigation, finds that the average American child is
under-nourished.
Jesus said that he came in order that the people might
have life more abundantly; but present conditions in
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America render it absolutely impossible for the multi-
tude to live abundant lives. The working man sees his
own children stunted and pale, while those of the more
favored are well nourished. He sees the industrial cap-
tain, or the wealthy idler, indulging their fancies in Ital-
ian villas, while he attempts to exist with his family in
a one-room tenement. He sees the children of the indus-
trial captain enjoying the advantages of individual instruc-
tion, of college education, of travel, of books and pic-
tures, of beautiful and ennobling surroundings, while his
own children, while still mere babies, must give up even
the poor opportunities they have had of education in
crowded schoolroom, in large classes, under overworked
teachers, where they are tossed, so to speak, like inani-
mate materials by cartfuls into educational hoppers, to
be ground out supposedly into uniform products — and go
out at the end of the fourth grade to enter upon their
sentence of hard labor for life. He sees all the injustice
of the situation and his heart fills with unquenchable hate.
That conditions shall continue as they are is inconceiv-
able. Either the wage slave must resign himself to a state
of slavery or the whole slavery system must go. I see no
signs of resignation on the part of the workers. I can
see no signs of anything but the overthrow of the present
system. The day of privilege is almost over. The word
"privilege" means literally exemption from the burdens
of the law. God himself enunciated the universal law,
"In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread." In all
ages the privileged class has perverted this to read, "In
the sweat of other men's brows shall I and my children
eat bread."
In the past the privileged class has generally been able
to secure a monopoly of intelligence, and therefore easily
maintained their privileges. They could persuade the
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Democracy and Social Progress
more ignorant toiler that he was composed of a darker
clay, only fit to serve his betters. They pacified his dis-
content by promising him that he should, if obedient,
receive his reward by an abundance of privilege in an-
other world, or they sweetened his slavery by giving back
to him, on the Master's birthday, or at Christmas time,
a portion of the product wrung from him, as a gracious
gift. To-day, however this privileged class no longer
monopolizes intelligence. On the contrary, superior intel-
ligence is rather to be found among the unprivileged class.
Scientists, inventors, artists, and writers are seldom found
in the privileged class. Therefore, the doom of privilege
is sealed. Throughout the earth to-day is heard the in-
sistent demand among the masses for more abundant life.
Not only in America and in Europe, but in Turkey, in
Persia, and in China, the multitude demands the abolition
of privilege. The clock of the age is striking. Privilege
is fighting its last battle. Democracy is conscious and
militant. To oppose this great movement is as futile
as to attempt to drive back the ocean tides with a broom.
The question is not whether the new era of economic free-
dom will come ; the question is whether it will come peace-
ably or with seas of blood.
Historically, the overthrow of privilege has usually
been accompanied by great violence. I hope that the in-
dustrial battles in Colorado, in Michigan, and in Law-
rence, Massachusetts, do not presage a terrific and bloody
conflict. If economic democracy does come without ter-
rific violence, it will be due, in my opinion, largely to the
efforts of the Church. The Church is in a position to in-
fluence both combatants more favorably than is any other
organization. It can say to the laborer : "You need not
give up your Christianity in your zeal for democracy, for
fundamentally they are the same ; both mean abundant
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life for all men. You are entitled to abundant life and
you are not required to wait for it for future generations
or for a future world; but it is to your interest, as well
as that of humanity, that you secure it by constructive
means. The church can say to the privileged class. You
must yield privilege; you and your children must hence-
forth eat only bread that you yourselves produce. In
emancipating the exploited, however, you will be really
emancipating yourselves."
The most hopeful sign of the present day to me is the
whole-hearted zeal with which leading clergymen are
seeking to obtain social reconstruction without bloodshed.
It is a fine thing that in such assemblages as this, con-
vened to secure exchange of ideas and co-operation for
social betterment, that the leadership is being taken by
active ministers of all religious denominations. The task
to be performed is, nevertheless, almost appalling in its
magnitude. The workman feels crushed to the earth ; he
sees no light ahead for himself or for his children ; he is
desperate. Either unversed in historical studies, or, if
so trained, denying the conclusion that education and
political action are more effective in righting wrongs than
are physical violence and bloodshed, he tends instinctively
to strike out blindly. To persuade him to constructive
effort is often very difficult.
Even more difficult, perhaps, is the task of persuading
the beneficiaries of privilege to climb down from the backs
of others and walk. Privilege is so sweet, or seems so
sweet, that for many centuries casuistry has been exercised
in the attempt to satisfy the unprivileged without depriv-
ing the privileged of their advantages. To-day the phrase
most perverted in this word game is that of "equality of
opportunity." Honestly put into practice, equality of op-
portunity would be a great step toward securing abun-
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Democracy and Social Progress
dance of life for all. As actually used, the term merely
tends to confuse discussion. The assumption that slavery
and brotherhood might exist together seems to us ab-
surd, yet by an ingenius species of word juggling it was
so claimed for centuries. Jesus was logical and honest.
When he declared that abundant life was for all and that
all were brothers, he meant it. His immediate followers
for a time practiced this belief. Wealth was held in com-
mon ; there was no privilege ; a state of actual brother-
hood existed. But privilege soon crept in and word jug-
gling began. Even the great apostle to the Gentiles, St.
Paul, reared as he had been, a member of the privileged
class, could not rid himself of the belief in the necessity
of privilege, and attempted to reconcile slavery with
brotherhood. On the one hand, he enjoined upon slaves
obedience to their ''masters in the Lord," and on the other
hand enjoined upon the masters kindness to their slaves
as to ''brothers in the Lord."
To-day, everybody professes allegiance to the principle
of equality of opportunity; but few believe in an actual
equality of opportunity. A race, however, is not an equal
race if, at the pistol shot, one athlete starts a half mile
in advance of his rival at the base line. The poor boy is
not given an equality of opportunity if his richer rival is
favored with more nourishing food, better opportunities
of travel, more artistic and intellectual surroundings, not
to speak of a greater chance of securing an occupational
position offering future advantages of power and re-
wards. Real equality of opportunity, if put in practice,
will accomplish wonders, but it will cost a big price. It
cannot be secured by pleasant words nor by merely re-
formatory measures. It will require such radical changes
in the whole political and economic framework of society
as the following: An inheritance tax that will place the
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rich man's son on an equality with the poor man's son ;
a land tax that will restore the wealth of nature to all the
people for the benefit of all, and the public ownership
and operation of the great industries that supply the
necessities of life to the people.
These are radical steps, it is true, indeed revolutionary ;
but nothing less will give us real equality of opportunity.
George M. Reynolds, in his presidential address before
the American Bankers' Association, stated that eleven
men, of whom he admitted himself to be one, practically
controlled the industries of the United States, and de-
clared that with such industrial despotism there could be
no liberty for the American people.
Private economic despotism is not only converting a
large proportion of the citizens of the land into wage
slaves ; it is woefully inefficient. George W. Perkins, an-
other member of the small oligarchy which controls the
nation's industry, in his testimony before the United
States Commission on Industrial Relations, said, "Any
one approaching this country in an airship and looking
down on it and seeing our great, fertile fields and rich
mines and the comparatively small population, then seeing
the number of unemployed — the number of people who
are not employed as they should be — would think this
was a lunatic asylum!" Another large financier, A. L.
Stephens, of Detroit, says, "One of the great troubles of
our country is, and has been, the putting at the helm the
sons of rich people who never know how a dollar is
earned, or know the true meaning of the word 'panic' ;
their promotions were gained by the power of their
fathers or some relative's money and position." Experts
before the Interstate Commission have recently testified
that the boards of directors of some of the largest rail-
roads in the country are filled with men, who, when not
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Democracy and Social Progress
mere dummies, are still wholly ignorant of the business
that they are presumed to direct.
Despotism, political or economic, is everywhere ineffi-
cient. Napoleon sent, one after another, Austrian armies
of overwhelming numerical superiority, reeling in head-
long route ; and the reason for this was very simple. The
officerships of the Austrian armies were held by dukes
and counts ; the positions were filled by privilege. In Na-
poleon's army it was said that every private carried a
marshal's baton in his knapsack. His generals came from
the humblest walks of life. Some had earlier served as
bakers and tailors and shoemakers. Ability and merit
secured the officerships. Until a few years ago officer-
ships in the British army and rectorships in the English
church were obtained openly by purchase. As they have
become socialized, so officerships in the industrial army,
if only for the sake of efficiency, must be socialized.
Modern life is regimented and organized into vast
armies. Therefore even more than formerly are the labors
of detached individuals to better the world, ineffective.
Cardinal SatoUi, some years ago, criticized American
churches for participating in the movement to secure gov-
ernmental prohibition of the liquor traffic. **Let the
churches regenerate the individual," said he, and "the
saloons will close up for lack of patrons." The churches
however, now realize that the ''sweep before one's own
door" policy, if it ever works, will not work in our mod-
ern, highly-organized life. We must Christianize the
whole framework of our social structure and it is a great
step forward to learn that society cannot be in practice
regenerated by preaching to the drunkard, temperance ;
to the employer, kindness ; to the rich man, charity, and
so on. But there is a still more important step ahead of
this. Negative prohibition of alcohol and vice is good ;
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
positive, affirmative provision for a social structure that
affords abundant life for all, is better. Jesus wasted little
time in condemning vice. Instead, he furiously de-
nounced privilege. He knew that conditions, not indi-
viduals, were to blame. Not one harsh word did he utter
to thieves or prostitutes. His scathing invective was lim-
ited to the privileged classes, to the orthodox Pharisees,
the heretical Sadducees, and the theological scribes, who,
differing in other particulars, were identical in this : They
lived the life of the privileged, eating the bread produced
by the sweat of others' brows.
Robert Owens took charge of a cotton mill which was
in financial difficulties and operated by ignorant, vicious,
and drunken employees. He never discharged a single
employee for any cause whatsoever. He surrounded them
with better conditions, with more abundant life. As a re-
sult, ignorance and vice and drunkenness disappeared.
The factory became known throughout the world as an
oasis of sunshine and right living, and the enterprise be-
came a great financial success. Mr. Ford, the automobile
manufacturer, told the Commission on Industrial Rela-
tions, that he could take every convict out of Sing Sing
prison and make a man of him.
Men are not bad ; conditions are bad, and we must
change the conditions. Under our present industrial sys-
tem, thousands of rich idlers and millions of poor idlers
are not employed at all. Other millions are not produc-
ing things that make for abundant life for the many, but
cater to the luxuries and frivolities of the few. Still
others produce nothing at all, but as solicitors, agents,
brokers, they sell things more or less worthless. The
tragedy of our present age is the small number of work-
ers actually engaged in the labor of producing useful
things. Yet upon the backs of these few useful toilers
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Democracy and Social Progress
is laid the support of all the rest. Modern invention has
multiplied an hundredfold the productive capacity of the
individual worker. If everybody worked and everybody
labored to produce useful things, abundant life for all
would be easily possible.
The average man would then live even more abundantly
than does the rich man to-day. For a superfluity im-
poverishes life almost as much as does actual want. Said
Jesus, "A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of
the things which he possesseth." In the achievement of
wealth the ordinary American is so oppressed by care
and anxiety that he has no time for "living." If he ''suc-
ceeds," that is, grasps more money than he knows what
to do with, he does not know how to Hve, he cannot buy
life — he can only buy things. Wealth takes away the
necessity of labor for his children, removes the incentive
to service, the greatest enricher of life. His children,
next to the children of the poor, have the least oppor-
tunity; they are surrounded by temptation to self-indul-
gence, to vice, and to degeneracy. Equality of oppor-
tunity and abundance of life for all would also bring
about the removal of physical and moral plague spots
which threaten the homes of the rich as well as those of
the poor.
Under socialized industry, service of every character
becomes truly dignified. Peter refused to permit his
Lord to wash his feet ; for under slavery, service is
menial. Under freedom, the workman may still be forced
to derive his livelihood from a monotonous and soul-kill-
ing drudgery at the factory machine, but he realizes that
it is for the service of the nation and not the private
profit of an employer ; and instead of his penal hours, ex-
tending from ten to twelve hours daily, he will work
under a system by which all labor and for useful prod-
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
ucts, only, and each man's necessary task will amount to
only three or four hours. After work hours, with most
of his time and strength remaining, he can really live.
He can spend it in scientific research or artistic creation
or gardening or social intercourse or whatever he chooses.
Life, too, will be easier for him when his wife and daugh-
ters are no longer distressed by the extravagant expendi-
tures of their wealthy friends.
Our present system is killing genius in milHons of
souls. The world is impoverished continuously by the
loss of intellectual and artistic ideas that are never per-
mitted to come to flower. For a single generation in
Periclean Athens, though hampered by the institutional
slavery and surrounded by national enemies, a portion of
this community was permitted to develop its culture upon
a basis of democracy and the practice of abundant life,
and to-day the world stands spellbound by the glory of
its accomplishments.
Under a system of economic democracy, America, free
from the menace of foreign enemies and favored by the
enormous advance in mechanical invention and knowledge
of sanitation and hygiene, can, in a single generation,
without any doubt whatever, exhibit a culture far supe-
rior to that of Athens.
We stand to-day confronting tremendous possibilities
for good or for evil, which may well cause us to tremble
for the results. We have, on the one hand, nation-
wide discontent that will not accept pleasant words in lieu
of abundant life. If we hesitate, if we attempt to juggle
words, to say, "Peace, peace, when there is no peace," if
we talk of equality of opportunity and then block any at-
tempt made to remove privilege, if we try to substitute
charity for justice — if we do these things, we are likely
to have a revolution as much more violent and bloody
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Democracy and Social Progress
than the French revolution as are the unprivileged to-
day more intelligent and conscious of their wrong than
were the French peasants of 1789.
On the other hand, if we insist upon justice and real
equality of opportunity for every child in the land , then
there will come a state of happiness and intellectual and
moral development such as the world has never dreamed
of.
If the Church follows the example of Jesus, it must
support democracy, poHtical and economic. Mark Ilanna
called upon the Church to aid in the protection of prop-
erty. But as has been pointed out by a Jewish professor
in the University of Berlin, the utilization of the Church
of Jesus as a bulwark to property is the greatest travesty
in history. The Church of Jesus, the man who had not
where to lay his head, who bitterly cursed the propertied
classes as devourers of the homes of widows and orphans,
who lashed the bankers with a whip of cord, turning over
their tables and scattering their moneys in the street, who
was put to death for arousing the discontent of the work-
ers against the privileged — that this Church should serve
as a prop to privilege is a proposition too absurd for this
enlightened age.
With such Christian leaders as Walter Rauschenbusch,
Josiah Strong, and Dr. Reginald Campbell, of London,
and with such ringing resolutions for social justice as
have been recently passed in conventions of the Episco-
pal, Presbyterian, Congregational, Methodist, and other
churches, there can be no doubt that the influence of the
Christian churches, with thousands of ministers and mil-
lions of adherents, will henceforth be exerted to gain
abundant life for all of the people of this land.
All the forces for social betterment must unite in this
common movement to Christianize our national and inter-
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
national, political, and social structures, by substituting
the principles of humanity for that of patriotism, co-
operation for competition, abundant life for negative re-
striction— in short, to Christianize war and slavery by
wholly abolishing them.
35Q
Chapter XXX.
THE REVIVAL OF OUR NATIONAL RELIGION
AND SOCIAL PROGRESS.
BY J. S. m'gAW.
I feel that the words of your chairman are true ; that
the fitting cHmax for this congress is the realization of
the fundamental relationship which religion bears to all
social progress. In the last analysis, social progress will
be commensurate with the growth of religion among the
people. It is not the nation that makes the religion ; it is
the religion that makes the nation. The Hindoo and the
Chinaman have just as much brains as the German or
American. It isn't the lack of brain capacity; it is the
difference in the philosophy of a people that counts. The
Hindoo thinks that man has sprung from nothing, and
his highest ideal is going back to nothing; consequently
there is no progress, simply stagnation. The other
teaches that he sprang from God, a person, and is going
back to God, a person, and his highest ideal is to be like
God ; consequently there is progress. So you have in the
philosophy of the Occident and the Orient the secret of
conditions, one stagnates and the other grows and pro-
gresses through the centuries. So it isn't the nation that
makes the religion ; it is the religion that makes the na-
tion. Confucianism produced China, and that meant
mental and moral stagnation for centuries until Christi-
anity struck it, and then China changed her form of gov-
ernment. It is said that the queen of Madagascar once
wrote to Queen Victoria, asking her the secret of English
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
power, and Queen Victoria sent back a magnificent copy
of the Word of God. That is the secret. We have no
hesitancy in affirming that the secret of this great western
empire is the Word of God. The source of power is the
Christianity which it teaches, and while we have never
had, and pray God may never have, an estabhshed church
on American soil, we have always had a national religion.
There is a vast difference between the divorcement of
church and state and the divorcement from the state
of the religion which makes it. So while we have never
had a state church, we have always had a national reli-
gion, and that is Christianity. It was written into the
Mayflozver compact before that ship touched the shore ;
you will find it in all the extant colonial documents, like
a golden thread running all the way through; it is in
the Declaration of Independence ; it is in the inaugural
and farewell addresses of Washington, and in the resolu-
tions of Congress over and over, and in the messages and
papers of the Presidents. It is embodied in the decisions
of the Supreme Court and of the Federal and State
courts ; it is in the constitution of every State in the
Union, including that of the great State of California;
it is in the oaths administered in the courts of justice ;
"So help me God." The citizen is not only asked to ac-
knowledge the existence of God but to stand in the court,
and before the judge, offer a prayer to God. You will
find the Bible in the public schools of thirty States, and
in the Thanksgiving proclamation issued by the Presi-
dent and governors. You will find it embodied in the
statute laws of all the States of the Union ; it is stamped
upon our coins, 'Tn God We Trust." Turn where you
will, you come face to face with the fact that upon Amer-
ican soil there is a national religion, and that national
religion is Christian.
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Revival of Our National Religion and Social Progress
And, friends, the Supreme Court of the United States
in 1892 had a case before it in which they were compelled
to decide what kind of a nation this is, and so they had
passed before them in careful review all this evidence
which I have presented and far more beside from our
legal documents, and from our general, national life ; and
at the conclusion of that magnificent review they gave
the unequivocal decision that this is a Christian nation.
The genius of our American Republic is Christian and
the common law of the land is based upon Christianity,
and the greatest single battle to be fought on American
soil at this moment is for the conservation of our national
Christianity. All the reforms that we seek in civic life
depend upon that, for the religion of a people constitutes
the environment of a people, and so we must look to
our national religion as the fundamental thing if we are
to get anything like progress in social conditions.
But some one sits back and says, "Is our national reli-
gion in danger? Doesn't it exist like the atmosphere
that we breathe?" But the atmosphere may become poi-
soned and lose its life-giving property ; and there is
danger that the atmosphere of our national life, derived
from the mighty impulse of the colonial days, the great
inspiration in the building of our American institutions —
that that national religion may become contaminated and
in a large measure lose the power it originally possessed.
We must remember that while we have had for one
hundred and fifty years the dominancy of our national re-
ligion ; while we had it all during colonial times, when the
young giant grew up he wholly ignored his forefathers'
creed, he forgot his early instruction, and he made a
document which contains no reference whatever to God
or Jesus Christ or to the law of God, which is the only
true basis of civil law. We have a constitution which
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
does not in any wise recognize our national Christianity.
That is a great defect. There is a struggle between
a democracy which proposes to de-Christianize America,
and a democracy that proposes to Christianize America;
on one side the religious democracy and on the other side
the secular democracy, determined not to rest, day or
night, until the last vestige of Christianity is banished
from our national institutions.
First of all, is the American Secular Union, repre-
senting ten million agnostics, atheists, infidels, banded to-
gether and sending out from their headquarters in Chi-
cago their literature denouncing the principle, which they
hold up to scorn that the Church of Jesus Christ, which
they hold in contempt, and our American Sabbath, and
all these Christian features have made us what we
are. And in the Truth Seeker, their weekly organ, they
demand that we banish the Bible from our schools, do
away with all chaplains in the army and navy, and all
days of prayer in our Republic, and that we may be
guided by natural morality and not Christian morality.
1 don't know what natural morality is ; I have never been
in any country where they had a first-class example of it.
The nearest approach to it, I imagine, would be in the
middle of the Philippine Islands among the bolo throw-
ers and head hunters, or among the Hottentots and Zulus ;
and I want to tell our friends that their lives wouldn't be
worth seven cents if they were to live in the kind of a
land that they want to make America. There is no in-
surance company that would accept them as a risk, if
they insisted on living in that kind of a country.
But these people have lobbyists in the legislature and
send out their literature. And back of them is the Amer-
ican Conference of American Rabbis, representing the
Jews, and they are trying to de-Christianize America and
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Revival of Our National Religion and Social Progress
make it Jewish, if possible. Their idea is to banish the
Bible from the public schools, do away with the Amer-
ican Sabbath and all reference to Christianity in any
form in legal documents, legislative enactments, or in our
national life, manners, and customs. They have just
had their twenty-fifth annual convention.
Back of them again are the reformed Jews, and they
give opportunities to the rabbis to lecture, and see that
the lecture is published in the papers. They represent
between one and tvv^o miUion Jews ; they are putting thou-
sands of dollars into the propaganda.
Back of them stands the great, organized liquor traffic,
which realizes that Christianity is inconsistent with the
saloon, and so the whole hue and cry of the liquor traffic
is "Away with the Church; what has Christianity got to
do with politics or national life?" They maintain that
God has nothing to do with government. They are using
thousands of dollars in their work, for it is the only hope
of the continuance of the saloon.
Then there is the Roman Catholic Hierarchy. The
rank and file of the Catholics would be willing to leave
the Bible in the public schools ; but the hierarchy, never.
It is opposed to that, and to the free education of the
people. They want to banish the Bible from every
public school in America and they are spending thou-
sands of dollars to let us know that they are opposed to
the public school.
Then we have always back of them a number of other
sects, who, in order to foist their tenets on the govern-
ment, are willing to accept the aid of these other organ-
izations. All of these constitute the secularizing forces
in America, and they are to-day one of the gravest dan-
gers we have under the Stars and Stripes. I am not so
much worried over the prospect of an invading army or
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
navy as I am over the existence of forces that will re-
move the foundations on which our social existence is
built. Their whole plea is that it is ''unconstitutional,"
and they hark back always to our law. We can always
fall back on the common law of the land, because that is
Christian; but how much better if we could have in our
fundamental law a clear-cut statement of our national
religion; and it ought to be there.
Suppose a young man starting out in life, upon reach-
ing his majority should say, 'T don't propose for a single
instant to acknowledge my responsibility to Almighty
God and his reign in my life ; I don't propose to accept
the law of God." What could you expect? Would you
be surprised if that young man drifted into the saloon
business? That is what Uncle Sam has done; he is the
chief partner in business with two hundred thousand
legalized saloons under government protection. You
wouldn't be surprised if that young man had very loose
ideas with regard to divorce and polygamy, would you?
To-day we have fifty-one different divorce codes, all busy ;
we have fifty-five different reasons for divorce ; we have
delivered one hundred and seventy-five thousand divorces.
It has been estimated that every second minute a divorce
i? applied for, and every third minute one is granted.
One in every three marriages ends in divorce in Kansas,
and in the United States, one in every seven. Next to
Japan, we lead the world in the number of divorces and
murders.
You wouldn't be a bit surprised if that young man had
a very loose idea in regard to polygamy. The Mormons
are stretching their tentacles over eleven States, with a
direct wire to Washington ; for three administrations they
have dictated the policy of our national life. They send
out missionaries in every part of the United States bear-
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Revival of Our National Religion and Social Progress
''ng a pagan message blaspheming the name of God ; and
notwithstanding all the protest, Reed Smoot still sits in
the United States Senate.
You wouldn't be surprised if that young man had a
very loose idea with regard to the Sabbath, and you
found him a Sabbath desecrator. Every Sunday the mail
trains are speeding across the continent, while an army
of men must work all day to gain their bread. It is only
lately that they stopped Sunday work on the canal. It
is a shame that this great world's fair should be open on
the Lord's day. I want to tell you that if you have no
Sabbath you will soon have no good religion, and if you
have no religion, you will have no God, and then no con-
science, and then no respect for the rights of your fellow-
men, and then lawlessness and anarchy will come, and
those two things, lawlessness and anarchy, are increasing
in direct proportion as you lose the Bible from your pub-
lic schools, and your American Sabbath.
You would not be surprised if that young man had
loose ideas with regard to the Bible in its relation to the
state, the citizen, and national life, and there are these
groups that I have told you of that are trying to banish
the Bible from the school and the national life.
I might mention a great many more things in our na-
tional life that mark the drift; I have only given you a
few to indicate the mile posts and give you a realization
of the necessity of going back to the fundamental that
made possible this American nation, and that is our na-
tional religion. What we need to-day is a proclamation
of the principles of God as they are applied in national
life in such a way that they will go deep into the heart
of every American citizen, and then we will have a cit-
izenship that will overthrow all the great systems of evil,
and write into our fundamental law the acknowledgment
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
of God who sits upon the throne ; and until we do that
we can never say that America has been brought to
Christ. You would be surprised in going through the
Bible, how large a proportion of it is given over entirely
to national welfare; fully a third of the Bible is God's
specific message to the nations.
I want to emphasize the absolute necessity of this dec-
laration of our national religion; every day America re-
fuses to acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ as her Lord
and Master is a disgrace. God has determined the ap-
pointed seasons and has set the bounds and habitations of
the peoples of the earth ; he has meted out to us every
inch of soil under the Stars and Stripes. The Lord Jesus
Christ died for the redemption of America; if you don't
get anything else, get this truth ; Jesus Christ swung from
the cross to save America and American social life. "God
so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son" ;
that is the great news for the individual ; speed it around
the world until the last sin-sick soul on the face of the
earth has heard it. But you don't hear the following verse
so often ; "God sent not his Son into the world to condemn
the world, but that the world through him might be
saved." iVnd the Greek word translated "world" is "cos-
mos" ; in its root meaning it is an orderly arrangement.
When it is applied to the physical universe you mean the
orderly arrangement of the stars and planets. Applied to
humanity, it is the orderly arrangement of mankind, or-
ganized society in all of its manifestations, and there is
no possibility of evading that meaning of cosmos when
you are dealing with humanity. God did not send his
,Son to redeem organized society, but that organized so-
ciety through him might be saved. There you have
the great fundamental hope for the transformation of
human society; the only hope is the Lord, Christ, the
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Revival of Our National Religion and Social Progress
Savior of the family, of the state, of society in all of its
departments. This is the end for which he laid his hands
upon the cross, the end for which he descended into the
grave.
He tells us to go and preach to all the nations, teach-
ing them to observe all of these laws. I look for-
ward across the ages to the time when nation after na-
tion shall own him as their Lord, and the Church of Jesus
Christ as their faith. But the safety of the nation de-
mands that we have this acknowledgment of Christ in
our fundamental law. God is very specific when he
speaks of the nations : "All the nations that forget me
shall be cast into Sheol." But the nation that accepts
him shall live and prosper.
In Congress there has been a bill to recognize God in
the Constitution ; the committee did not report it out ;
Congress was not ready ; but the time must come to every
man and nation when it must decide between good and
evil.
And we must have a revival of our national religion
because the good of the world demands it. We are living
in a great age, and bear great responsibilities. The Chris-
tianizing of the United States Government is our only
hope; it is our only hope of Christianizing China, and
of demonstrating the gospel of Jesus Christ to the na-
tions that sit in darkness.
Somebody asks what influence we have abroad? Can
we ask that question in this day when we look across
the sea and behold the carnage? Do we not expect to
have America step forth with the dove of peace on her
hand ? Are we not to-day in the limelight of the world's
vision? Some one has said, "As goes America, so goes
the world." But if God chooses he can forget that Amer-
ica ever existed. We hold the advantage now ; our oppor-
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tnnity is now, and we must acknowledge our national
religion that we may bring peace to those nations now
at war.
General Grant, when he was campaigning, refused to
allow his picture to be painted on the flag, because he said
no man was good enough to have his portrait placed upon
the flag ; and he was right ; but is not the Man of Galilee
good enough to have his portrait painted on the American
flag? On Sunday morning, on board our warships, there
is a white flag with a blue cross run up to the masthead,
above even the Stars and Stripes, which signifies that the
men on the ship are engaged in worship. If that flag can
swing from the yard arm of our navy, can it not also in
our national government? Let us have a revival of our
national religion, and choose out from among us men
who fear God. Send them up to the State legislatures
and to our National Congress, and they will acknowledge
God in our Constitution.
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Chapter XXXL
THE PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS.
BY CHARLES S. GARDNER.
It is a bold undertaking to attempt to discuss this sub-
ject within the brief compass of an address. It would
require condensation to bring an adequate discussion of
it within the limits of a volume.
As one studies this important subject the more an ade-
quate answer to it seems to require an analysis of the
fundamental principles of the social life. At the thresh-
old three conceptions of society confront us, our accept-
ance or rejection of which will profoundly influence the
answer which we shall reach.
According to one, society is a great being with a con-
sciousness, a purpose, a will, a personality of its own,
distinct from the minds, purposes, wills, personalities of
the individuals who are its elementary constituents. It
regards society as an organism after the analogy of a
biological organism. Mr. John A. Hobson, a firm ad-
herent of this theory, thus states it: ''Society must then
be conceived, not as a set of social relations, but as a
collective organism, with life, will, purpose, meaning of
its own, as distinguished from the life, will, purpose,
meaning of the individual members of it.* He accepts,
it would appear, almost without qualification, the biolog-
ical analogy. "The study of the social value of individual
men no more constitutes sociology than the study of the
cell-life constitutes human physiology." This conception
of society is a very old and persistent one. It may be
traced back through many able thinkers to Plato. It is
*Work and Wealth, p 15.
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a mistake to claim, as Mr. Hobson by implication does,
that it underlay the whole social life and thought of the
ancient world ; but as soon as the group ceased to be re-
garded as a religious unit and a scientific conception of
society arose, it took this form. It is still potent in our
present-day thought.
The second conception is at the opposite extreme. So-
ciety is only a mass of individuals, fundamentally inde-
pendent of one another, who find it convenient to come to
terms with one another and manage somehow or other to
do so, and live together according to rules agreed upon
among themselves. The social compact idea of Rousseau
has been outgrown, but the principle of it still underlies
popular social thinking. We are safe in saying that there
can not be found a trained thinker on social questions
who now accepts it.
The third view, and the one to which I hold, is that
society is an organism, but of a peculiar type, analogous
to the biological organism in only some particulars, while
in some most important respects it is different. A society
is an organism in that it is composed of living elements,
has a distinct and definite unity, develops from within in
response to the conditions of the environment, and de-
velops by the formation of organs for the performance of
special functions in the interest of the whole body. We
may go further and say that these organs are composed
of individual elements which are more and more narrowly
specialized as the organism develops to higher and higher
stages. But further than this no significant analogy can
be traced. In it, unlike the animal organism, there is not
developed a centralized consciousness controlling and
correlating the activities of the several organs. In fact,
in the development of society the tendency seems to be in
the opposite direction. What we see here is, if I may use
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the phrase, distributed consciousness ; the elementary con-
stituents— call them cells, if you wish — develop with the
higher organization of society a more and more intense
individual consciousness, and the several organs of the
social body come more and more under the control of
these individual minds acting together. This is the very
meaning of democracy, expressed in terms of social psy-
chology. If apart from these there is an over-conscious-
ness, we are not aware of it, it is not given as a fact of
the individual consciousness, and we cannot locate it ; it
simply lies outside the range of perception of the indi-
vidual. To assume that there exists such a collective
consciousness separate from individual minds, is to in-
dulge in pure metaphysical speculation. These individual
minds react upon and influence one another profoundly,
and relate themselves to one another in many definite and
regular ways. They are "social minds." Indeed a gen-
etic study of the individual mind shows that there is no
other species of mind. They are all social. They are
always developed in a social medium. To be conscious
at all, in any clear and definite sense of the term, is to be
conscious of self as a factor in a social situation. As
mental development goes on the consciousness of self in-
creases in clearness and intensity, the self deepens to an
interior focus ; at the same time the social content of
consciousness not only becomes clearer, but enlarges to
include wider circles with which the individual feels him-
self to be vitally related. This double process of the sub-
jective concentration and the objective expansion of the
content of consciousness is the characteristic mark of
mental growth. The personahty more and more realizes
itself as an individual in an ever-widening circle of con-
scious relations with other personalities. One becomes
more individual and more social at the same time and in
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the same process. The social mind is in the individuals
of society. The social will is not a separate will apart
from and above these individual minds ; but is the cor-
relation or organization of these wills brought about by
their reaction upon one another. It is something more
than a common orientation of these minds, a mere coin-
cidence of their determinations ; and something less than
the determination of a mind distinct from and above them.
The social mind and social will are located in individuals,
if they are ascertainable by us at ail.
I dwell upon this abstract proposition because one's
practical conclusions are necessarily influenced by the
theoretical considerations which lie behind them. If so-
ciety is a great being with a mind and will and purpose
of its own, distinct from the minds, the wills, and the
purposes of individual persons ; if it is itself a great
personality, in which you and I play the part played by
the cells in the animal organism, then social progress must
in the last analysis consist in advancing toward the reali-
zation of that over-individual purpose. But what is that
purpose ? How can I tell ? Do the cells in my body know
what my purpose is? Suppose them to be endowed with
individual consciousness, if you will (though that is pure
assumption), do their minds include the consciousness of
my purpose ? Certainly I cannot discover among the con-
tents of my consciousness any awareness or intuition of
an over-individual purpose which this assumed over-indi-
vidual being cherishes and is striving to realize. I have
some consciousness of my own purpose, of the agreement
of my thought and will with the thoughts and wills of
many of my fellow-beings, and also of the disagreement
of my own thought and will with those of many others ;
and as my consciousness expands I become more or less
aware of the fact that, as a resultant of these agreements
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The Principles of Social Progress
and conflicts, there comes a collective decision as well as
a general trend of the collective life. But if, apart from
these individual minds and their interactions, there is a
great, central Mind of the social body which is directing
all toward some goal of its own choosing, I have no
consciousness of it; and no function of my mind enables
me to read the purpose of that Mind or to discover what
the goal is which it has chosen. How, then, is it possible
for me to ascertain what its standards and valuations are,
that I may have a criterion of social progress ?
It may be said that history will give us the clue. But I
think not. In the first place, we are at a loss to know
whether each human group has an over-individual mind
of its own. If so, these several group-minds do not seem
to be in agreement ; and if progress consists in advancing
toward the realization of their purposes, then it means
one thing in one place and a different thing in another
place. Or is there one general social consciousness guid-
ing the development of humanity as a whole, and correlat-
ing these several group-minds toward an end that lies be-
yond them all? If there be such a supreme central mind
of humanity guiding the total movement of human his-
tory, is it free? That is, is the goal toward which it is
moving predetermined for it? If free, does the goal of
its choice remain always the same? Can it change its
purpose ? With this theory we are left free to fly on the
wings of speculation through empty space over the vast,
tossing ocean of historical change, without chart or com-
pass to guide us. All that we can say is that progress
must consist in advancing toward the end chosen by this
super-personal mind, but what that end is, we are without
any sure means of ascertaining.
But another question of great importance arises. Do
the interests of this assumed, super-individual being co-
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incide with the interests of the individuals composing it?
Here again we are without any sure answer. Evidently
we can never be sure that they do ; and the assumption,
tacit or expressed, in the writings of the social philoso-
phers who maintain this theory is that these individual
and over-individual interests do at least often conflict, and
that it is not unfrequently necessary for the interests of
the individual to be absolutely sacrificed as the great
Social Being moves toward the realization of its own
ends. But if true, it lands us in an ethical contradiction
from which there is no escape; nay, it leaves us without
any ascertainable, ethical standard that is at all sure.
For on this theory the final criterion of right must be co-
operation with the super-personal being in the attainment
of its chosen ends ; but what that end is, must ever re-
main uncertain to the limited consciousness of individual
minds. We may be told that a sane, social policy consists
in making "provision for harmonizing the order and the
growth of the narrower and the wider organism," which
would be quite reasonable if first there were any sure way
of knowing definitely the purpose of the "wider" or super-
individual organism, so far as it may be different from
that of the "narrower," that is, the individual organisms.
I am profoundly convinced that this theory introduces
a confusion which is both unnecessary and interminable
into the effort to define a standard of social progress.
On the other hand, let us approach the question from
the point of view of the third conception of society. Ac-
cording to this, all real values must in the last analysis be
individual. There is no consciousness except in individ-
ual organisms. Where there is no consciousness there
are no values, for valuation is a conscious process. We
may speak of objective values ; but that is only the attri-
bution of subjective meanings to objective things. Things
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The Principles of Social Progress
in themselves, that is, apart from their relations to con-
scious beings, are neither good nor bad, neither beautiful
nor ugly, neither pleasant nor unpleasant. These and all
other qualities are only names for the meanings which
things have for conscious beings. They indicate forms
or modes of consciousness. These propositions carry
v^^ith them the inevitable inference that social conditions
and policies are good or bad only because they promote
or hinder the welfare of individual persons. A social
organism, which really is only a system of psychical rela-
tions among the members of a group, has no conscious-
ness apart from the minds of those related persons and
therefore has no values to realize or to conserve apart
from its meaning for their welfare. That system has
unity and is continually undergoing modification and de-
velopment in certain, regular ways, according to which
these minds react upon one another in striving to realize
their several interests. The social organism, therefore, is
only a medium in and through which its conscious con-
stituents, human beings, may realize their welfare.
This raises a question that involves the fundamental
meaning of life, What is the welfare of a human being?
Confining ourselves yet a while longer to general princi-
ples, we may say that a human being's highest welfare
consists in realizing the maximum possibilities of his hu-
manity, the development of his personality to the highest
possible point. Time forbids an attempt to demonstrate
in detail the truth of this proposition. To my mind it is
hardly open to question. It is the nature of a living or-
ganism to develop its potentiality. To such an organism
everything is injurious which defeats or hinders this
process ; everything advantageous which furthers it. But
a human personahty is distinguished from lower organ-
isms by the fact that it must work out its destiny on the
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congreis
ethical level of life. As it develops it assumes one of two
types ; it must be organized either around some dominant
motive zvhich is indifferent or opposed to the well-being
of the group of which it is a member; or around the zvell-
being of the group as its controlling ^native. In the first
case the well-being of its fellows becomes insignificant
or incidental or subsidiary ; in the latter case the well-
being of others, that is, of the group, as it is the central
and dominant motive, subordinates to itself all other con-
siderations and excludes those that are inconsistent with
it. There is a third conceivable possibility, namely, that
the personality should organize itself as an ellipse, of
which the foci would be two co-ordinate motives — the
first, the interests of the self as distinguished from the
interests of the group ; the second, the interests of the
group as distinct from the interests of self. But could
such a bi-focal personality ever attain, or, at any rate,
maintain an equilibrium between these dominant but dis-
tinct and co-ordinate motives ? I think not. I grant that
some, perhaps many, personahties do approximate this
type of organization. But their moral life is an unstable
equiHbrium. In fact they really alternate between the
first and second types. Sometimes the one, sometimes
the other motive is in the ascendant; and gradually they
tend to crystallize into one or the other of these types.
Our moral intuitions attest that the second type of per-
sonality is the higher, that is, the more truly, fully, and
nobly human. The greatest moral leaders have been men
of this type ; especially was he who has gradually and irre-
sistibly won his way to the supreme moral leadership of
the race.
If now with this conception of society, we examine the
past experience of the race and try to gather from the
vast series of its changes its general meaning, we shall
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The Principles of Social Progress
find that we hold in our hand a most valuable clue. We
shall find, I think, that the evolution of human life with
all its variations, shifts, confusions, progressions, retro-
gressions, and crises, resolve itself into three essential
processes :
I. The human groups that at first lead an independent,
or relatively independent, life increase in numbers, ex-
tent, and the complexity of their organization. Of course,
some of them disappear, sooner or later, or are absorbed
by others ; and none of them can count upon a straight
lineal development without blending with others in some
way and in some degree. The tendency is toward the
development of larger and still larger organized groups,
and along with this goes the increasing complexity of
their internal life. As one surveys that process, and sees
how steady the trend is^in that direction, it is hard to re-
sist the conclusion that the human race is destined to be
organized as one immense group with an almost infinite
complexity of interdependent functions. But does not the
great conflict that shakes the world to-day speak in tones
of thunder a point-blank denial of this prospect ? Not to
one who has studied the whole history of this process.
To my mind the boom of the most powerful artillery the
world has ever seen, the terrific bursting of aerial bombs,
and the deadly, under-sea explosion of the torpedo are
but the loud proclamation of the fact that the race is
already partly organized as an economic and cultural unit
and that poHtical isolation and opposition cannot much
longer obstruct the process of bringing all sections of hu-
manity into this organic unity.
II. Meantime there goes on a parallel process of "civ-
ilization," or the building up of culture. It consists essen-
tially in preserving and transmitting to succeeding gener-
ations the increasingly varied experiences and achieve-
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
ments of the race. First, there is the growth of institu-
tions, that is, more or less fixed methods of adjusting men
to one another in the more important spheres of human
interest, such as the poHtical, the economic, the religious,
and the educational. Second, ideals and standards of val-
uation arise and become authoritative in the various sec-
tions of society. Third, knowledge increases. What for-
mer generations have done and thought is not suffered
to sink into oblivion, but is preserved in records ; while
the vision of men is not only extended backward, but is
broadened laterally, so to speak, to take in what their
contemporaries are doing and thinking. Of equal or even
greater importance is the fact that by accumulated ex-
perience man's knowledge of nature is extended and made
more definite; he learns to control and organize natural
forces ; he builds around himself an artificial environment
which gradually assumes an importance in his life greater
even than the natural one in the midst of which he began
his career in the world ; and he creates from the raw
materials of nature a vast store of economic goods for
the sustenance and comfort of life. As the knowledge of
history and nature increases and is clarified by critical
processes, the sciences and arts develop. Thus little by
little grows the vast but incomplete structure of human
civilization, to which each succeeding generation is born
heir and to which it adds the results of its own thought
and endeavor.
III. It appears that along with the enlargement and
growing complexity of the group-life and the develop-
ment of culture, the men themselves become more indi-
vidualized, especially in their mental and spiritual organ-
ization. On the average, each comes to possess a more
peculiar and pronounced personality. Each appropriates
and enjoys more freely whatever of the accumulated stock
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The Principles of Social Progress
of social goods his inborn tastes and capacities call for
and enable him to utilize. He becomes more free to move
hither and thither over wide areas of the earth ; more
free to choose his companions, his occupations, his rela-
tions, the end for which he will live. The grip of the
"dead hand" is relaxed ; the tyranny of blind custom is
weakened. The individual, on the average, becomes more
rationally self-directing; his consciousness more alert;
his will more autonomous; his conscience less subject to
external authority. Does this mean the decay of the sense
of obligation and the growth of license? It may. In-
deed, there have been stages in the great process when it
apparently did mean that. There have come epochs of
moral disintegration and confusion when the moral deficit
became so great that the social order fell to pieces, or
was held together by force alone ; but in such times, if
one looks around, he will see emerging a movement for
the reorganization of the moral life on a higher plane,
and in the long run the sense of obligation will be both
deepened and extended in its range. This was eminently
true in the slow organization of the modern world out of
the ruins of the ancient order; let us believe that it will
be true in the new era of human history that must follow
this epoch of economic, political, and spiritual crisis.
As a matter of fact, the development of the moral life,
both in the deepening and the extension of the sense of
moral obligation, is an indispensable part of the general
social processes I am describing. The enlargement of the
group must be accompanied by the extension of the area
of the obligation the individual feels ; and the growing
complexity of its life, since it necessarily brings with it
a greater degree of interdependence, must emphasize the
duty of each to all and of all to each. Otherwise the so-
ciety will break down through the lack of an ethical bond
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
strong enough to hold all its members together in a cor-
porate life ; internal antagonisms will develop which will
destroy the social unity and split the body into war-
ring factions, or shiver it into a complete anarchy of dis-
cordant elements. It may be laid down as a sociological
law that the expansion of the group and its internal dif-
ferentiation require both the lengthening and the strength-
ening of the ethical bond, for the reason that the bond
must hold together a large number of men more distantly
separated in space and more dependent upon one another
in their increasingly specialized activities. There must
grow up a sense of community of life with a wider group
and a keener realization on the part of each individual
that he is a trustee of the interests of all the others.
I venture to assert that the chief break upon the wheel
of social progress has always been the insufficient realiza-
tion of a higher ethical life to correspond with the more
developed social situation. The ethical development seems
to lag behind the processes of expansion and differenti-
ation of the group life. As an illuminating example, con-
sider the prophetic period in Hebrew history. Israel was
passing out of the simple society of the tribal period into
the more comprehensive and complex life of the state.
The tribal organization was undergoing inevitable disin-
tegration in the process. The ethical life was lagging in
its progress. The prophets were the men who took the
ethical principles of the primitive period that was passing,
unfolded their deeper meaning and gave them a wider
application to the broader conditions of a national life.
Doubtless all the earlier peoples passed through a similar
socio-ethical crisis ; though nowhere else, we must admit,
were the appropriate principles so strongly grasped, '^o
clearly and persuasively expounded and given the author-
ity of such powerful religious sanctions. If modern
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The Principles of Social Progress
civilization collapses it will, I think, be due to the fact
that our social order will have become so vast and intri-
cate that the ordinary people on whom such heavy respon-
sibilities are imposed are unequal to the proper perform-
ance of their social tasks, because their ethical develop-
ment has not kept pace with the expansion and complica-
tion of their social relations. Certainly there are ominous
indications that such an ethical failure may be among the
possibilities of the not distant future. I am neither pre-
dicting nor expecting such a catastrophe, but it is not
wise for our optimism to blind itself to the possibilities
of the modern situation. If it should occur it would
only be a repetition, on a more colossal scale, of the de-
cline and fall of the ancient civilization, and due primarily
to the same cause ; and, of course, would be preliminary
to a new and finer era of human development.
Strictly speaking, these stages of moral progress, which
are so striking a feature of the general broadening and
complication of the social life, are not introduced by the
discovery and adoption of a new moral principle, but are
marked by a more subjective realization and a broader
application of one great principle which lies at the basis
of moral conduct — the "consciousness of kind," as Pro-
fessor Giddings has called it, or group-consciousness. It
is an obvious fact that men do not feel moral obligation
beyond the limits of their conscious community of life,
and feel it in proportion to the degree of that conscious-
ness. Within the circle in which it is felt it fluctuates as
from time to time this consciousness varies in acuteness.
I do not mean to say that no other consideration influ-
ences or modifies one's sense of obligation. When one
man enters into a special relation with another, certain
specific duties are, of course, involved in that relation.
When definite agreements are made with others, the obli-
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gation to keep faith is, of course, felt to be binding.
But the interesting fact is that these particular obliga-
tions assumed in contracts come under the general prin-
ciple just stated. If one has no "consciousness of kind"
with the other party of the contract; or if for any reason
that consciousness becomes weak or disappears, the con-
tractual obligation varies accordingly as to the feehng of
its moral imperativeness. This is the reason why treaty
obligations between nations snap like weak cords under
the strain of national interest. This is the explanation
of the strange ethical paradox witnessed every day upon
the field of battle, when at one moment a soldier is doing
his utmost to take the life of a soldier in the opposite line,
and at the next moment is equally solicitous to save his
life as a wounded captive. At one moment the national
group — consciousness is in the ascendant and subordi-
nates or suppresses the broader human group-conscious-
ness ; while at the next moment the situation is reversed.
And the singular thing is that the soldier feels that he is
doing his duty in both instances. In this principle is
found the explanation of the ethical paradox that a man
whose consciousness of kind has never been expanded be-
yond racial hues, or is feeble beyond those limits, will
treat persons of another race with indifference or even
brutality, though he may be normally observant of moral
obligations toward persons of his own race. A man
whose conscious community of life has never been ex-
panded in vigor beyond the limits of his family, his circle
of kinship in the narrower sense, but is relatively strong
within those limits, will be rather keenly solicitous of the
interests of those within the short radius of his group-
consciousness, but coolly indififerent to the welfare of men
who are so unfortunate, or fortunate, as not to be in-
cluded among his near kindred.
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The Principles of Social Progress
The sense of moral obligation extends, then, in con-
centric circles as one's "consciousness of kind" expands to
wider groups of those who are felt to be his fellow-men.
But in the process the sense of kinship becomes, so to
speak, refined. It becomes less physical and more spirit-
ual. The sense of physical kinship does not indeed disap-
pear; the "consciousness of kind" still involves in some
measure the realization that a common blood flows in the
veins of all within the circle. But it is more and more
characterized by the realization of a common psychical
life, a community of spiritual nature, as the group with
which one feels himself identified grows larger and larger.
At the same time it normally becomes more subjective,
more inward ; the corresponding obligation comes to be
less and less an attitude imposed by custom, and is more
rationally conceived as a personal duty. Like a tree it
sends its roots down deeper into the individual personality
as it spreads its branches to cover larger areas of sur-
rounding humanity. It must deepen as it expands.
We may sum up this general and somewhat abstract
discussion which has thus far occupied us as follows :
humanity is continually aggregating in larger groups ;
the organization of these groups is continually becoming
more complex and its specialized activities more inter-
dependent, while the value of individual personality is
more strongly emphasized and the sphere of its indirect
influence is enlarged. A necessary corollary of this
double process is that the sense of moral obligation must
at once extend and deepen; which means that the con-
sciousness of kinship must become more spiritual and
expand to include wider circles of humanity. The inevi-
table goal of this development would seem to be the
organization of the human race into one group, with an
ethical life which springs from a lively sense of spiritual
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kinship with all men, so that the love and service of hu-
manity will become the dominant motive of the average
man. This goal seems far away, but the development of
humanity so far, when properly read, seems to indicate
that it is the goal. Hitherto the evolution toward this
has been punctuated by great crises of which apparent
moral failure and social disintegration have been the out-
standing features ; and other such epochs may await us
in the future. Those epochs in which the wave appeared
so disastrously to recede were due to the fact that the
expansion and organization of the group-life outran the
process of socializing the units of society. If these state-
ments are correct, it would seem to be the inevitable in-
ference that social progress consists in advancement to-
ward this goal, and that this advancement must proceed
by more thoroughly democratising and moralizing the en-
tire social order as it grozus more extensive and compli-
cated.
Turning now from this general discussion, let us con-
sider the application of the principles stated to some
particular spheres of social Hfe.
I. The political sphere. In this sphere progress lies in
bringing all the political functions more and more directly
under the control of the people, and in directing all polit-
ical activities more consciously to the reahzation of the
highest ethical ideals. The vast extent and highly com-
plex organization of modern States constitute a difficult
problem for democracy. When the political group was
small and compact and the political machinery was not
so very elaborate, as in the ancient and medieval city-
states, the problem of democratic control was difficult
enough; but it was not comparable to the difficulty pre-
sented by our great, modern, territorial States. When
the rnodern States arose they included wide territories
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The Principles of Social Progress
whose population was sparse and for the most part aggre-
gated about local centers between which intercommunica-
tion was slow and infrequent; and the solution of the
problem of popular control was sought and fairly well
secured by emphasizing local self-government, keeping
centralized state authority at a minimum, and delegating
the functions of government to representatives period-
ically elected by the people. But this method is proving
inadequate to the present situation and is breaking down
before our eyes. Modern society no longer consists of
relatively isolated, semi-independent local groups. There
are still centers of social life; but those centers are vastly
larger and more complex ; are knit together by numerous
and various lines of communication and are integrated in
a highly centralized and interdependent system of na-
tional, or more properly, international life. The political
machinery has followed this development and become
extremely complex, whether we regard the methods for
securing the expression and registration of the popular
will or the methods for putting that will into execution.
From the people as sovereign through the poHtical ma-
chinery back to the people as subjects, is a long and
crooked road which runs through many mountain defiles
and many dark and dangerous jungles, and is frequented
by highwaymen all along. The result is that the will of
the people is imperfectly ascertained, inadequately ex-
pressed, frequently misinterpreted, and was for a time
openly defied. The representative system suited the con-
ditions under which it grew up ; it does not suit the con-
ditions under which it is now giving way. The machinery
has become so complex that only an expert who devotes
himself to the art, can manipulate it. Hence the emer-
gence of the political boss and his machine, an entirely
logical and inevitable development of the attempt to oper-
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ate a representative system of government under condi-
tions to which it is no longer adapted.
It is evident that we must profoundly modify the repre-
sentative system. We must establish a more direct con-
nection between the people and the government, which, in
theory, is the expression of their will. I shall not now
enter into a discussion of the methods proposed for secur-
ing this result. Suffice it to say that we must move — in-
deed, are necessarily now moving — toward a real govern-
ment by public opinion. The press must more and more
become the forum for political discussion, rather than
the party headquarters, or secluded committee rooms, or
even the halls of legislation. Proposed measures must be
threshed out in the public press — which should be made
a public press rather than the press of private interests —
and in groups of citizens assembled for the free and open
discussion of matters pertaining to the common weal,
until public thought crystallizes into public decision.
Representative assembHes, if any function shall ulti-
mately be left them, must act simply as the agents for
registering that decision. The people must learn to vote
for measures rather than for men, and be given the op-
portunity to do so. Along this line we must proceed to
dethrone the silent boss and the voluble demagogue, who
is usually the 'Voice of his master," and to enthrone the
thoughtful citizen. Or will it be the enthronement of the
mob ? So it is claimed by some who look with apprehen-
sion upon the growing unpopularity of the present sys-
tem. But if that be true, our case is a desperate one
indeed. To save our pohtical life from the tyranny of
the boss, we appeal to the people. To save it from
the tyranny of the mob, must we take refuge again under
the dominion of the boss? Surely we are not to see-
saw eternally between these alternatives. Can the crude-
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ness, haste, and passion of popular thought be eliminated
only by passing it through the sieve of machine politics ?
If our only alternatives are the boss and the mob, it is
like making a choice between the claws of the tiger and
the teeth of the wolf. I do not think that we are reduced
to that extremity, because I believe that the people can, by
the very practice of democracy, be educated sufficiently to
pass intelligent and honest judgment upon public inter-
ests. It is a significant fact that those who are standing
most stoutly against reform movements are also bitterlv
opposed to the movement toward bringing the people into
more direct control of public affairs. This does not mean
that there are not among the opponents of this movement
some able, honest, and unselfish men. There have been
some able, honest, and unselfish men opposed to every
movement ever started in the interest of humanity. The
simple fact is that the evils of our present political life
do not indicate a failure of democracy, but the failure of
a system which, by reason of changing social conditions,
has gradually grown up as a substitute for democracy.
This leads me to emphasize the second requisite of po-
litical progress — the moralizing of political activity, the
conversion of all the organs and functions of political life
into means for the realization of our highest ethical
ideals. This, of course, is much more easily said than
done, but hitherto political progress has come along this
line, and along this line it must continue.
It has been ably maintained that the state is an institu-
tion which arose as a means of economic exploitation."''
This theory of the origin of the state does not seem to
me to include and explain all the facts, but beyond ques-
tion it contains a great truth. The state has never
entirely lost this character. What is law to-day but the
*See The State, by Oppenheimer.
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unstable equilibrium reached by the pressure of various
groups, each of which is seeking to reahze its own par-
ticular interest? The statement is made, and truly, that
*^the balance of the group pressures is the existing state
of society."* And the most active and powerful of those
groups have always been economic interests whose mo-
tive has been gain and whose chief method has been ex-
ploitation. Even when the groups have not been eco-
nomic in the technical sense, they have usually been actu-
ated by the economic motive. In all the past, down to
this present moment, the government has been a special-
ized agency through the control of which these gain-seek-
ing groups have in proportion to the measures of their
strength exploited other groups. But the process of mor-
alizing government has been going on. Slowly, much lOO
slowly, the conviction has been gaining ground that the
government has become a constructive co-operation for
the common weal rather than an unstable equilibrium of
conflicting interests. Political progress may be measured
exactly by the growth of this conception. The govern-
ment must cease entirely to be the instrument of the
dominant, self-seeking forces in society. The negative
theory that it is merely the umpire of the game in which
conflicting groups are seeking their own selfish ends, must
also be abandoned, if progress is to mark our future.
The state must set itself the task of positively realizing a
great ethical ideal, the personal development of all its
citizens, and shape its policies to that end. Let not this
form of statement carry with it the implication that the
state is something separate from and above the body of
its citizens. This notion, brought over from the days of
royal absolutism, has led some people to characterize as
"paternalism" the ideal of government I am contending
*Ben4ley's "The Process of Government,'' p. 259.
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The Principles of Social Progress
for. The term is singularly unfitting. Paternalism in a
real democracy is impossible. When a democracy sets
itself this task, it is ''fraternalism," and without it there
is, in fact, nothing but a democracy in name. What I am
pleading for is the building up in the minds of the people
a higher and better standard of social ethics ; the educa-
tion of the people to realize that personal development is
the only real interest of any man, and that the personality
can be developed on the moral level only as it ceases to be
self-centered. They should be brought to conceive of the
state as a constructive institution in which the body of
the citizens co-operate through the instrumentality of the
law for this high purpose. Thus law becomes relatively
less a mere protection of rights and relatively more an
authoritative definition of duties within a given realm of
social relations. At bottom the issue is this : Shall the
state be used as an instrumentality for promoting the
economic interest of certain groups of the people or as
an instrumentality for promoting the general well-being
of all the people.
II. The economic sphere. I have just said that law
must more and more become an authoritative definition
of positive duty within a certain sphere of social relations.
Economic relations have always been the principal sphere
of political activity, and never so obviously as in the pres-
ent epoch ; but economic activities have been less demo-
cratized and less moralized than any other, except war
itself, and the chief obstruction to poHtical progress lies
in that fact. The most urgent and the most fundamental
issue of our time is whether economic life can be demo-
cratized and moralized. It is a rather bold and compre-
hensive statement to make, but present conditions seem
to justify us in saying that such a structural and ethical
reorganization of industry must take place if the splendid
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march of our civilization is not to end in disaster. What
I mean by democratizing industry is that those who co-
operate in the production of economic values must also
co-operate in determining the conditions under which the
work is done and in the division of the products. Those
who co-operate in the production are divided into three
general classes — first, those who do in the main the brain
work, the organizing and directing ; second, those who do
chiefly the physical labor; third, the public, whose wants
determine the value of the products and whose general
interests are both directly and indirectly affected by the
methods of production. Of course, a very large propor-
tion of the persons who compose the public themselves be-
long to the first or the second class of those directly en-
gaged in production, so far as one or two industries are
concerned; but with respect to other industries form a
part of "the public" in the strict sense of the term. For
example, the organizers and working men of the trans-
portation business stand in the first and second classes
with respect to that industry ; but with respect to all other
industries, in the third class. Now, all these classes must
be given a real and potent voice in determining the pol-
icies and methods of a given industry and in the division
of the values which they have jointly created. Whatever
the difficulties involved in such an organization of in-
dustry— and I realize that they are very great — it is a
requirement of elementary justice that it be done. In
fact, it has already been accomplished in small part, but
through the method of conflict, and this method keeps
alive class feeling and stimulates suspicion, if not hatred.
We must strive to lift the whole matter out of this atmos-
phere of strife on to a higher ethical level. This is a
necessary condition of moralizing industry. The injustice
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The Principles of Social Progress
of the present system is so manifest that it is really amaz-
ing that it should not be apparent to every one.
But though industrial democracy is a fundamental,
ethical requirement, it is not what is primarily meant by
moralizing economic life. The phrase is used to indicate
the setting of distinctively ethical aims for all forms of
economic activity. The man who engages in any occu-
pation with the motive of gain central in his conscious-
ness can never do his work in a truly ethical spirit; and
the average man, as human nature is constituted, will,
unless deterred by external prohibition, fall into methods
that are positively immoral even according to present
standards. The man who has his eyes focused upon his
own interest will, by a psychological law almost as fixed
as that of gravitation, be unable to see in their proper
proportions the interests of other men. Other men's in-
terests will ordinarily occupy the "fringe" of his atten-
tion. His own interest will be magnified and the inter-
ests of others proportionally dwarfed in his consciousness.
This will be true even when he is dealing with another
man face to face. But our economic system is to-day so
organized that it does not bring men face to face in the
greater number of their dealings. It is a vast system of
corporate activities and relations ; it does not bring men
into immediate contact with by far the greater number of
those with whom they are related through these activities.
If a sort of moral astigmatism affects the vision of men
when they have business dealing directly with one an-
other, how much more true is it when the other man is
not in sight at all, and perhaps not even in mind except
as an abstract buyer or seller. The corporate organiza-
tion of business lends itself with marvelous ease to the
selfish exploitation of others — which "others" are only
so many impersonal figures upon the chess-board of the
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
economic game. It is obvious that the more highly and
widely organized occupational activities become, the more
imperative it is that they be definitely aimed at distinc-
tively ethical ends, if they are not to degenerate into cus-
tomary means of exploiting other men. I do not believe
that any system of external, forcible restraints, however
necessary they may be in the present order of things, can
successfully prevent it. At best they can only make more
difficult and hinder in some measure the exploiting proc-
ess. The evil will not be remedied, in fact will not in
any important degree be reduced, until we moralize eco-
nomic activities by bringing them under the law of public
service, and setting for them ethical ends — or the ethical
end, the welfare of all the people. Can any one tell why
men should not enter into business, organize and conduct
industrial and commercial corporations for the conscious
purpose of promoting the welfare of their fellow-men?
Impossible? But why? Impracticable in the present
order of things? So much the worse for ''the present
order of things." The purpose of human life, let us
remember, is not to preserve the present order of things,
but to promote human welfare.
It is, of course, not a simple matter of a change of
mind on the part of individuals in business. The indi-
vidual is impHcated in a vast system which is organized
around the motive of financial gain ; and this materialistic
motive, which is non-ethical always and often positively
immoral, is acutely emphasized by the necessity of com-
peting with others in the same field of industry. It is
not practicable, therefore, for the individual to throw off
the dominion of this motive without imminent risk of
being crowded to the wall. It is properly a question of
the moral reorganization of the system of economic life.
That is a large undertaking, and may involve more or
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The Principles of Social Progress
less radical changes in the structure of economic organ-
ization; but how can any thoughtful man question that
we must move along this line, if progress is not to be
arrested ? The opinion is often expressed that the motive
of material gain is the only stimulus powerful enough to
keep the machinery of modern industry going at full
speed, and that to substitute for it a motive far more
noble but far less potent would result in such a decrease
of production as would impoverish all and reduce the
poorer classes to sheer destitution. If that be true, we
must resign ourselves to the conclusion that we cannot
moralize industry without destroying it ; that industry
and morality are somehow inconsistent with one another.
We should be slow to accept that pessimistic conclusion.
The man who maintains that the present industrial system
and methods are the embodiment of a high ethical prin-
ciple certainly cannot have made a careful and unpreju-
diced study of it. The consciousness that the present
system is not ethical is increasing in the ranks of both the
successful and the unsuccessful classes. It must continue
to increase as the system is carefully scrutinized in its
principles and processes ; and if the reorganization of
industry on a high ethical basis cannot be accompHshed
without killing it, we have certainly come up squarely
against a terrible dilemma.
Are we not prone to underestimate the strength of the
grip which the moral motive has upon the hearts of men?
If we look at the question from the standpoint of the
believers in Christianity, shall we confess that our religion
has really accomplished so little after all these centuries?
If we reject the pretensions of Christianity and look at
the matter simply from the point of view of moral evolu-
tion, are we prepared to admit that there has been in
fact so little progress? Personally, I cannot take such a
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
pessimistic view of the moral advancement of the race.
Look at the truly colossal contributions of money for
beneficent purposes. Can any man whose heart is not
black with pessimism attribute these mainly to motives
of vain-glory? That motive doubtless plays a role in
much of it, but I refuse to believe that it is the chief
spring of this mighty stream of benevolence. Men find
increasing delight in doing good to their fellows. And
if the moral motive is strong enough to make men part
with much of their gains, is it reasonable to suppose that
it would be so much weaker than gain as a motive to
work? Much of the work of the world is motived by
the altogether wholesome desire to be self-supporting;
much of it by the laudable desire for honorable distinc-
tion ; much of it by the equally praise-worthy desire to
achieve, to give adequate expression to one's self in
creative effort. All these legitimate desires may be grati-
fied under the control of the great ethical motive of pro-
moting human welfare, just as in the old order of things
they have been organized under the domination of the
motive of gain. Unless my vision is distorted, there are
signs all about us that the ethical passion is becoming too
strong to be much longer tolerant of a system of eco-
nomic life, organized on an unethical principle and re-
pressive of the nobler impulses and aspirations of hu-
manity. Under an ethical system there would be multi-
tudes of men willing to work with zeal, and it is absurd
to suppose that such men constitute a weaker and in-
competent class. Probably many of those who are now
active would relax their endeavor, but the net result
would be to select and bring to the leadership of industry
those who respond readily to the ethical ideal, while the
class who are insusceptible to this incentive would drop to
the rear in economic life; and would this not be a de-
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The Principles of Social Progress
cided improvement upon the present situation? It would,
unless we are willing to maintain that common sense,
energy, and executive ability do not go well with high
ethical qualities.
In conclusion, then, we may define social progress either
in terms of social organization or in terms of personality.
If we fix attention upon the structural relations of so-
ciety, progress consists in the extension of popular control
over all social functions and in directing all social activ-
ities to popular welfare as their end. The social system
becomes more vast and more complex, more interde-
pendent, and if its control is centered in a few individuals,
its increasing vastness and complexity place in the hands
of the controlling persons a power that constantly becomes
more extensive and more nearly absolute. At the same
time it removes them farther and farther from contact
with those who are subject to their will. Hence the con-
ditions as they develop must drive us either in the direc-
tion of an oligarchy, the power of which grows greater
and at the same time falls into the hands of a relatively
smaller group of men, or in the direction of a democracy
wherein all the people have a voice in all the affairs which
concern all the people. Manifestly progress lies in the
latter direction. But it is perfectly manifest also that
democracy is not a workable method, except as all social
activities are moralized. If the various individuals and
specialized groups are dominated by the motives of indi-
vidual or corporate gain, they inevitably clash with one
another. Out of the struggle some will emerge trium-
phant, and power will fall into the hands of a relatively
few persons, and even if the forms and pretenses of dem-
ocracy remain, its soul is gone. Democracy can become
a genuine reality only as all social functions are moral-
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
ized and the social order becomes a system of public serv-
ices operated in the spirit of service.
But the structural aspect of the matter is really sec-
ondary. Social progress must in the last analysis be de-
fined in terms of personality. To moralize social activ-
ities means to subject them to the motive of human wel-
fare. But a man's welfare means essentially the develop-
ment of his personality. As pointed out before, a person
as he develops beyond a quite low stage must cease to be
self-centered in his aims, purposes, sympathies. His con-
sciousness of kind must expand to include wider circles
of his fellow-men ; at the same time his consciousness of
individuality must deepen and his personality become
more autonomous. Now, social progress must be meas-
ured by the proportion of the people who are given suf-
ficient opportunity for and sufficient stimulation to per-
sonal development in this sense. It involves an adequate
supply of material goods for all important physical needs ;
but is not so much a matter of the quantity of material
goods as it is of their equitable distribution. It involves
education which will fit each man to do his particular
work well, and fit him also to enjoy his right as an heir
of all the past achievements of the race and as an intel-
ligent partner in all the achievements of his own gener-
ation. It involves ample leisure, especially for those who
must do the more monotonous tasks of drudgery, for the
very reason that they do not get in their work the stimu-
lation of their higher capacities. Leisure cannot be so
urgently claimed although needed by those whose work
itself furnishes stimulation to their higher powers ; for
stimulation of the higher powers is the essential thing.
The measure of progress is the proportion of the people
whose personalities are developed approximately to the
maximum of their capacity.
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The Principles of Social Progress
Using this standard as a measure, can we say that so-
ciety has made appreciable progress in all its changeful
history? It is difficult, of course, to apply such a stand-
ard as this to the conditions of any given age? The
conclusion reached will, in the nature of the case, be
based upon ''impressions" rather than upon accurate sci-
entific measurements. But we are quite safe in saying
that the progress accomplished is by no means commen-
surate with the gigantic and age-long striving of human-
ity. There are, indeed, not wanting historical students of
great learning who seriously question whether the race
can be said on the whole to have made any notable and
substantial progress. This is surely too pessimistic a con-
clusion. There can be no reasonable question that the
proportion of men who in the modern world realize in
some important measure the possibilities of their human-
ity is considerably greater than it was in the ancient or
the medieval world. But this quaHfied statement seem.s
to be the most that the facts will justify us in claiming.
And this is a sad confession. Why does humanity climb
the hill of progress at such a snail's pace ? Is this all that
it is possible to show for the colossal struggles and suf-
ferings of the masses of men and the truly divine aspi-
rations and sacrifices of the world's saints and martyrs?
Why should progress be so slow ? I trust that in the fore-
going discussion the reason has been intimated if not
clearly expressed. Men have been strangely slow in ap-
plying their ethical principles more broadly as their social
life expanded. The supreme issue that confronts us now
is whether we shall faithfully apply our ethical principles
to the vast industrial-political system that has grown up
as a result, in large part, of the marvelous mechanical in-
ventions of the last century and a half, and the way in
which we meet this issue will determine whether we shall
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
go backward or wander around aimlessly in a veritable
wilderness of social difficulties or take a long stride for-
ward toward the goal to which sages and saints have
pointed as the destiny of humanity on this planet. I
cherish the hope that we shall do the last, and in doing
so we shall approximate the divine ideal of Jesus— the
kingdom of God.
390
Chapter XXXII.
THE CHURCFI AND THE CHALLENGE FOR
SOCIAL ADVANCEMENT.
BY FRANCIS J. m'cONNELL.
I wish to begin, if I may, with an illustration that in
these later days has become somewhat famiHar to you.
I have myself heard it a number of times. It is said that
there is in the ordination service to the Buddhist priest-
hood, one question which is repeated seven times as the
candidate is led from station to station in his ordination
service; this one question is put to him repeatedly, and
that one question is this, "Art thou a human being?"
That is repeated seven times.
Now, that question, as uttered in the ordination service,
has no particular reference to the application that I wish
to make of it this afternoon, because Buddhism has not
made any great contribution in the way of an answer to
that question, or suggested any remedy. That question
we have to confront as we consider the forms of human
progress, and the question the Church has to keep in
mind. The minister of God need not be a sociological
expert, but he must call attention to the general consider-
ations which must be kept to the front. There have been
a great many stages of social advance since Jesus Christ
walked this earth, and we say that the spirit of Christian-
ity has been back of all of these. He did not lay down
any detailed system of progress, he announced certain
general principles, certain conceptions of human life, and
made those conceptions prevail in the thinking of his day
and every succeeding day; and it is the business of the
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
Christian minister to-day to keep these ideals to the fore-
front, and in that way he can perhaps do more than in
any other single way.
Our Lord felt free to criticize the social institutions of
his time from the standpoint of their effect on human life,
and we have sometimes taken his principles so much as
a matter of course that we have failed to see how revolu-
tionary they were when they were first uttered. "The
Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath."
When those words were first uttered they seemed to the
persons who heard them, a pestilent heresy, a radicalism
beyond all of our modern conception ; there is hardly
anything a man could say to-day more radical in its effect
than those words were then. The Master's whole atti-
tude toward the institutions of his time was a practical
attitude. He did not simply pick out this or that par-
ticular thing, but it was an attitude of criticism from the
standpoint of a fundamental approach.
Take the parable of the Good Samaritan. We have had
it interpreted to us simply as an individualistic parable,
simply teaching the duty of a man to help his neighbor
in distress. Sometimes it has been taken in that way ; but
then the student of social science comes along and says
we must go farther than that, it teaches that it is the busi-
ness of society to police the road from Jerusalem to Jeri-
cho, and of course that is worth while; but the whole
point of it was this : it was a criticism of a system ; the
system of the priests and Levites, which was such that
they could walk down a road and see a man stricken and
pass by on the other side, and still be priests and Levites
in good and regular standing. The criticism was of the
system which prevented them from doing their duty as
neighbors to the man by the roadside.
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The Church and the Challenge for Social Advancement
We have to raise that question concerning any system ;
every little while we have to break up systems, just lor
the sake of breaking them up, because they have become
too mechanical. We send a political party into the wilder-
ness because it is running too smoothly ; it becomes a
machine, and men forget the great interests they should
serve, and the party becomes an end in itself. So it is
with social institutions, when they fail to serve any longer
the larger human interests which they are intended to
serve. The Church has done this, and we understand
now that the Church is not an end in itself. When we
look upon it merely as an organization, we get away from
the standpoint of Jesus Christ, and something has to come
along to wrench us back to the proper perspective.
"Are you willing to be damned for the glory of God?"
That was once considered a very pertinent question.
That is the sort of question that comes from the system
which forgets about human interests. A system which
asks that kind of a question, expecting an affirmative an-
swer is inhuman, and when a system becomes inhuman,
the only thing to do with it is to break it up, or bring it
somehow to a better focus. The same thing is true of
the state as an organization. Why does the state exist?
Simply as a thing itself ? Not at all. It can be broken
up when it ceases to serve the great human interests.
Why do schools exist, or anything else, unless for the
sake of the human beings upon this earth? Humanity
has a certain right, you might call it the right of emi-
nent domain; the pressure of humanity for a larger Hfe.
As Jesus said, *T am come that ye may have life, and
have it more abundantly." That is the spirit back of
modern progress, and that must be kept in mind.
What should be the attitude of the state, is the question
that is continually coming up, in many forms. What is
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
the effect of modern society upon the man? What kind
of man does the church produce? What kind of man
does the school produce? W^hat kind of man does the
state produce, or our modern social and industrial organ-
ization ?
J. A. Hobson has written a book on "Wealth and Hu-
man Evils," a consideration of the modern industrial sys-
tem, and it is the only book of the kind of which I know.
We have taken a great many things for granted ; we have
too often overlooked the human values produced by the
system under which we live. Take, for instance, the
modern doctrine of property. Sacred is it? Not a bit
of it. In a purely incidental sense ; in the sense that I am
not to appropriate any of your belongings, but that is a
matter for the police ; but in the sense that we cannot ask
any questions about it, not at all. Not in the sense that
we can't go down to the bottom of modern property hold-
ing. Sometimes we talk about the sacredness of property
as if it were something we couldn't ask any questions
about. That is a great mistake, and in fact one of the
best things going on to-day is a scrutiny into the various
forms of property holding. There is a book written by
Oxford men which is a consideration of property rights,
and they all come to the same conclusion, to the funda-
mental conception that property has no right at all ex-
cept what is granted to it by society, and as a socially con-
venient instrument. There is one thing more important
than property, and that is human life. Human values
must be kept uppermost, and the worst mistake in this
world is the idea that any kind of industrial instrument is
more valuable than the lives it is intended to serve.
I am not speaking as a radical ; but we must face what
is going on in the modern world and take some stand. I
was very much struck by a recent debate between Bishop
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The Church and the Challenge for Social Advancement
Ryan and Morris Hillquit on socialism, and I was im-
pressed by the concessions that Ryan made. He was de-
bating against sociaHsm, but he said that he beHeved the
time would come when the taking of interest would be
done away with. The Roman Catholic religion, which
stands for vested rights, will go as far as that in making
concessions to a Socialist ; across Ryan's book was written
the imprimature of the Catholic Church.
Take the questions of rent, property, interest ; we must
test all these things by asking what kind of human inter-
est they serve. We have got to the point where any man
who takes money that he doesn't earn must be worth the
money that he gets. I have seen men that I would like
to endow because they are good people to have around ;
men of artistic impulses and fine character, and I don't
begrudge them anything they get. But we are coming
to feel that a man ought to be worth what society pays
to keep him going. Every man has an obligation to soci-
ety. Back of every man here is a long line of men who
died for him ; patriots and heroes who died for posterity,
and we are the posterity that they died for, and that is
rather a sobering reflection. A man must be worth to
the community what it has cost to rear and maintain
him. There is no sacredness about property that prevents
raising any questions about it.
Take our modern conditions ; what type of man do they
turn out? A better kind than some other conditions, but
man has not yet a proper chance under modern industrial
conditions. The majority of men haven't had a chance
yet ; most men have lived and died without any chance,
taking the world over, in lands beyond the sea and every-
where else. Most human beings went to bed last night
without having had enough to eat in the last twenty-four
hours ; the majority of persons on the earth are actually
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
hungry ; the present industrial arrangement doesn't fur-
nish enough food to alleviate the pangs of hunger. It is
better than it used to be, and it will be better a hundred
years in the future than it is now, because the Church will
keep raising these questions, and thinking in terms of
men and women. We must keep in mind the fundamental
question: What is the effect of these things on human
life?
There are certain forms of social movement that the
Church should do its share toward controlling, for some of
these things are getting away from the Spirit of Christ.
There is an increasing social discontent in this country
and across the sea. You may say that the present war is
stopping it, but it isn't; it is increasing it, and we can
predict that when the war is over there will be more
power in the hands of the people than ever before. They
will just wake up some morning and be in possession;
that is all. This movement is going on everywhere, and
it must be controlled because it is dangerous if it isn't.
We need the restraint of Christian principles, and to keep
all the organizations subservient to this one question:
What is the effect, stated in human terms? Will the peo-
ple be better off ? Have they a chance to live ? Have they
an opportunity to live a Christian Hfe under the new sys-
tem which may be proposed?
Things are moving with tremendous speed, so we must
have some control ; we must change the course of some
things. I knew an old man who used to pray, "Lord,
send us quick acting grace." That is a good prayer to-
day, because of the rapidity of the changes which are
going on. Some changes are being made too fast, be-
cause there is a lack of control, and we have to go back.
There are more Socialists in the world to-day than there
are human beings belonging to any other human organ-
396
The Church and the Challenge for Social Advancement
ization under the stars. I don't mean parlor Socialists
or persons that simply sympathize with socialism ; I mean
people who have voted the socialistic ticket in the last five
years ; organized Socialists. Yet so far Christianity has
not come to any understanding with Socialism. Now
Socialism certainly needs to learn something from Chris-
tianity, and Christianity certainly needs to learn some-
thing from Socialism, and there is need of getting to-
gether on this matter and facing certain problems to-
gether. Let me say that I am not a Socialist ; there are
certain things that can be struck out of Socialism that are
doing it harm. One thing is the materiaHstic theory of
history. Another is economic determinism ; another is
the idea of class struggle in some of the forms in which
it is emphasized. But after all that has been said, there is
a sohd body of opinion inside the Church and in Socialism
that ought to come together and come to some kind of
an understanding.
I have a very great admiration for the Roman Catholic
Church in some ways ; but it is annoying to have a Social-
ist speak of the Roman Catholic Church as if it were the
whole Christian Church, and then hear a Roman Catholic
get up and talk about the whole Socialist system as if it
were conceived in sin and born in iniquity. It is a move-
ment that is about as significant as any movement in the
world to-day, and we should come to some understanding
with it, and every good man in the Church is under an
obligation to consider this question.
Take the problems of organized labor. We don't have
very much influence as leaders of the Church in the coun-
cils of organized labor, and one reason is that we have
never come to any understanding with even the better
class of labor leaders. We have not made it our business
to find out and show our sympathy, and so things happen
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
that we don't approve. We are in a sense responsible for
these things; too often we do not try to grapple with
these problems, and yet great mistakes are being made.
It is the business of the Church to make the kind of
social atmosphere in which it is easier for some things to
happen, and harder for other things; that is what the
Church is for. It is not merely to convert individuals;
it is on earth to make it as easy as possible for people to
be good ; not by making concessions to the spirit of this
world, but by making such changes in the atmosphere
that some possibilities will be done away with. Men are
exposed to temptations that ought not to be; there is a
moral overstrain. There are some things that grow here
that won't grow in the city of Denver ; Denver is a mile
high, and some plants die out. So there ought to be a
moral atmosphere that will enable some things to grow
and others to die out. There are certain crimes that used
to be committed, that are not committed now because the
social atmosphere has changed.
It seems almost too much to say now, at this time, that
I hope the time will come when the thought of war will
be absolutely impossible ; nevertheless I think that time is
coming. The peace societies are going to help and the
people who are now fighting are going to help, and it will
come to pass that the moral atmosphere will be such that
we will no more think of settling differences between na-
tions by war than we now think of settling differences be-
tween intelligent people by a resort to fisticuffs.
When I was a boy I used to read books of geology,
and there were pictures of great, ill-shaped monsters
which went wallowing around, and I used to dream about
them, and I asked myself. Who killed them all off; there
was nobody there ? Nobody killed them off ; they died off
as the climate changed. So great changes are going to
398
The Church and the Challenge for Social AdvancemeJit
come about in our social life as from the God-consecrated
lives there will come about a change in the atmosphere
that will make some things absolutely impossible, and will
make other things flourish as though in the garden of
the Lord.
It isn't enough for you and me to get together this
pleasant afternoon and hope for these changes ; these
sentiments must get down into the very roots of a man's
life. The trouble is that some men hardly act Hke human
beings. I was standing one afternoon on Fifth Avenue
during the Easter parade. Down the street they came,
the automobiles costing thousands of dollars, and the
dresses costing hundreds of dollars ; just one vast display.
And a man standing at my side said, "Do you know that
this is what makes revolutionists of the red-handed
kind?" I said, "What do you mean?" "Why," he said,
"this useless display. Here is a man from the East Side,
not far oflf, and he sees all this useless extravagance and
he remembers that his baby is sick for lack of proper food,
and thinks of all the hardships he has to endure, and he
goes back from Fifth Avenue to the East Side, a red-
handed revolutionary."
What is that Easter parade? Think of the passion of
our Lord. What is this parade on Easter morning but-
a frightful and costly exhibition of sheer vulgarity and
bad manners? That is what it is. Because any display
of wealth, when it is not for an artistic purpose, is abso-
lutely unchristian, and we must stand against that sort
of thing. Clothes are supposed to be just the setting for
something spiritual that shows in the face. A man may
live a perfectly animal life at one end of the scale as
well as at the other; we must stand against human an-
imalism and human arrogance. The question of how a
thing is done, the manner of a man's bearing, is very
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Addresses World's Social Progress Congress
important. The attitude that men have taken has been
back of as many revolutions as the unearned increment,
and that has been back of a good many.
We say that the most important thing about a man is
his idea of God. How does he get his idea of God ? Well,
we make certain abstract statements, but they do not take
us very far. What makes the idea of God effective in
this world is the incarnation of the idea of God in the
human life ; and anything that gives men a larger concep-
tion of humanity by so much increases their conception of
God. The two things go together inevitably. The idea
of God makes for a worthier idea of man, and a worthier
idea of man makes for a worthier idea of God. We take
the best there is in human life, and say that is none too
good for the conception of God. On the other hand, if
we can give men a broader life, it may be that God him-
self will have a larger opportunity to reveal himself. But
God's day will never come until we work Christianity out
in all its social implications; then we can turn our faces
to the skies and ask God himself, "Art thou a human be-
ing?" in the sense of having certain human qualities, and
we shall know from our own hearts that in a profound
sense God is human, and we can come together on the
plane of human understanding. Let no man draw a line
between society and Christianity ; let us live for the truth
in our separate fields and God will sweep away these in-
fluences for evil, and bring in the day of the kingdom of
God.
400
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